Team BYRN: The Veil
by FallingInStereo
Summary: Some people grow up wanting to be heroes. Kevin Nakamura was more or less roped in to it. With his team, comprised of his primary-school friend, a fun-loving psycho, and a shy assassin, the team begins to encounter strange unknowns and a world shrouded in mystery. How will Team BYRN handle these developments? Find out by reading pls... Rated T for cursing. First fic yay
1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1: Arrival or something

A/N: This is my first story, so I'm using characters from my original novel (something still in progress) and adapting them into the RWBYverse. Done in First-person because the original novel is also in said format. I have an endgame played out, but the in-between is generally fuzzy. Please read through this sort of drabble thing and feel free to give a review!

/

I stroll aimlessly throughout the airship, slipping through the groups of chattering students as necessary as my thoughts consume my mind. A small commotion brings my attention to the side, where I notice a blonde girl capturing a black-haired girl with a red cape in a back-crushing hug. I can't help but chuckle for a brief moment at their antics before returning to the little world hidden in my head. A news broadcast faintly peppers the cacophony of the other students, my ears picking up a few sparing words.

_Blah blah, White Fang and something Torches_, I return to what's been on my mind all day: my weapon…or lack thereof. Despite us being in a casual environment, a look at the other students reveals to me glimpses of complex machinery, polished guns, and intimidating blades. Compared to those deadly objects of power is my backpack: a literal backpack, stuffed with whatever I deemed possibly necessary for my time at Beacon. Basic medicines, spare clothes, a pocket knife, a lighter, some papers, a pen, and a few provisions fill the bag just enough to be noticeable, but not so that I'd have to remove much to reach anything that's unfortunate enough to be at the bottom.

The sudden interruption of the droning newscast in the background snaps me out of my worry again. I look up at where the broadcast was recently playing, seeing a blonde woman on the holographic screen.

"Hello, and welcome to Beacon," the woman starts. "My name is Glynda Goodwitch. You are one of the privileged few who have received the honor of attending this prestigious academy." Any and all words after this disappear from my mind as I notice a tall spire barely coming into view from the airship's generously large windows. Other students soon clamor to the windows as well, taking in the same view, the second Glynda was done with her speech. A different noise captures my attention: the sound of someone getting ready to vomit. I grimace to myself as the succeeding sound of said person throwing up comes from my right. This accompanies the voices of the red-clad brunette and her blonde friend from earlier. I mentally offer my condolences to all of them, unfortunately not able to give much else beyond a paper towel to the girl.

Once we're out of the airship, I take in the air of the environment, noting the intimidating presence of the school itself further down the walkway. An interruption takes me away from my strangely untimely thought of what was for dinner. As I turn to face it, I realize that it's the blonde and brunette pair again. Well, mainly the shorter red-clad girl. I can't help but feel downtrodden as she seems to fawn over all the other students' weapons, as well as deploying her own…giant metal scythe…for a brief moment. I sigh, fingering the straps of my backpack before continuing on my way again.

An explosion behind me springs me into action, my aura flaring and my pocketknife sliding into my palm as I whirl on the noise. The same girl _again_, looking at the floor as another woman—basically the embodiment of snow, from what I saw—starts yelling at her. At this point, I can only roll my eyes and leave, given up on lending the young woman any more attention. I make my way to the auditorium where the Headmaster is supposed to give a welcoming speech. I take a place in the back of the room, well aware that my attention will wander no matter what I try. After what sounds like a foreboding and…empty…speech, all the students are directed to the ballroom to sleep for the first night. As we pass through the large hallway before the ballroom, I casually scan over all the dropped off luggage before reaching over and pulling my black suitcase from the sea of other colors and shapes.

"Oh—sorry," a girl's voice accompanies some contact with my shoulder. I turn and notice a girl about my own height glancing at me, one hand thumbing the ends of her waist-length hair and the other one ever-so-slightly gesturing to the suitcase in my hand. I tilt my head for a second in confusion, before looking back down at the luggage and noticing a red ribbon adorned on the zipper. My own suitcase doesn't have a red ribbon, the last time I checked.

"Oh, is this yours?" I grimace at my own lack of observation while averting my own eyes from the girl's dark hazel pair.

"Yeah." At this, I hand it over simply, letting her take it into her own grasp. "Thanks. I'm Jade."

"Kevin," I nod to her with a small smile, passing into the ballroom after giving the girl a once-over. She's clad in a red tank-top, trimmed in gold. Her detached sleeves hold the same motif, although in a slightly darker tone. On her arms are crimson and bronze gauntlets, starting right below the elbow and ending at her wrists. Her lowers half is covered by simple black jeans and brown knee-high boots. I catch her eyes also glancing me over, forcing me to hunch over in self-consciousness as I fiddle with the collar of my shirt. The girl seems nice enough, so I make note of her in the back of my mind.

Night comes, although not without the usual amount of excitement that might arise from having a number of guys and girls in the same room, however large, at the same time for sleep. The small argument surrounding the girl in the hood from the ship and her blonde friend appears to be the final mess before general silence blankets the students, and I'm able to finally slip into unconsciousness.

I constantly adjust the straps of my backpack, nervously listening to the Headmaster's instructions. From what it sounds like, every student has to reach the end of the forest, grab a "relic," and get back to the cliffs. Also, grimm are everywhere, but what would you expect from an initiation for a school where you learn to…fight…grimm. On second thought, it's actually kind of backwards in that sense—especially since I _still _haven't procured a useable weapon. I'd looked around the locker rooms earlier, but the armory was locked to new initiates. No one was any help in how to get the staff to let me borrow one either. Figures.

Noticing that the initiation had begun, I steady my legs to provide the best spring and direction from the launchpads we're all standing on. Some guy…the one who threw up on the ship, from what I can see out of the corner of my eye, seems to be really confused on the whole "Landing in the forest and don't die" part. I pay no heed to it, worrying myself about the same issue as my body is suddenly thrust into the air at deafening speeds. As my velocity weakens so that I start descending, I notice the flailing body of the blonde boy.

"Well, at least I'm not alone." Such a statement is immediately retracted as I watch his form take a sudden ninety degree turn right before he disappears into the canopy. A hint of red and gold blurred past and took his body with it. Someone interfered. I know this for sure when a woman's "I'm sorry" echoes past me. I can't help but feel agitated at the boy's free ticket to safety, taking to flaring my aura into a shield in front of me to hopefully lessen the impact that would splatter any civilian on contact. Trees and branches crash against my outward shield, sending my straight and clean descent quickly off course as I bumble in jagged lines to the forest floor.

Landing hurt. No better way to put it than "My entire body is made of pain at the moment." I pull my limbs back to around my torso, hugging my ribs as they slowly heal from their impact with the rocks and upturned roots that litter the ground. As soon as I can move without sharp pains wracking my body, I push myself up to my feet, sighing as I scan the debris around me for a good branch. After a few seconds, I pull out a mostly straight five-foot broken branch, and produce my pocketknife in order to get to work getting rid of the excess branches.

"No weapon Nakamura strikes again," I grumble, hacking away with the small blade. Because of certain situations, I never got the chance to build my weapon at the hunters' academy. I was trained to use the basic weapons, of course, but I possessed none. Once I have the makeshift shaft, I find another three strong sticks and whittle them down to sharp points. Producing some duct tape from my backpack, I combine all of these pieces into a three-pronged spear, sharpening the back end of the shaft into a fourth point for good measure. Glad to have not been interrupted, I set out for the temple.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2: Meeting the Team

If anyone is near me, they can probably hear my constant screams and curses as I swing my makeshift spear around, jabbing it back and forth into beowolf after beowolf as I pour aura into the wood to strengthen it against the forces being applied. Right as I ram the triple-pointed end up into the remaining creature's throat, who'd tried to lunge at me, the low growl of ursai come from behind me.

"Oh god fuck, are you serious?" I let the weapon drop loosely from the beowolf's body, gripping it so tight that my knuckles start to turn white. My breathing is already staggered from trying to keep up with the pack that I'd recently dispatched, and now there's more: Two more, to be exact. The one to my left yells on its hind legs before charging forward, its numerous back spines and bony plates preventing me from being able to get a hit in from this angle. I opt to diving to the side, letting my aura cushion me from the debris and the guck of the previous fight. Just as I whirl and try to use my agility advantage to stab the ursa in its side before it can turn, the second one knocks me up with its muzzle, sending me a few feet into the air. As I pull myself to my feet, thankful to have managed to keep my spear, I stare down the ursai, who are unfortunately already running forward against with their claws ready to take me down.

"Okay, plan B," I pivot on my heel and run at the nearest tall tree, running a meter or so up the trunk before pushing aura into my legs and leaping over the creatures. To my luck, their sudden jump to try and snag me is fruitless. I roll as I land to lessen the impact and continue to sprint away, only to be caught up by a third ursa, too large for me to simply jump over. "Or, I could accept my fate and die."

At this moment I stop moving and briefly glance at my spear—which, considering my opponent—could be better described as a glorified beating stick, and back at the large ursa with a groan. The pained roars of the two ursa behind me reach my ears moments later. This sudden development gives me the motivation to lunge forward, ducking under the swiping claws of the ursa major and swinging my spear into its supporting hind legs while I'm in close quarters. It rolls ungracefully onto its side before trying to pick itself up, its back spines keeping it grounded for an extra two seconds while I collect my bearings. The roaring behind me ceases, and I turn to investigate.

"Oh, hi," I wave breathlessly to Jade, who is standing over both ursai, clearly victorious.

"I guess this means we're partners," she gives me a sidelong glance, insecurity riddling her tone. It seems extremely mismatched against her shining silver blades, extending from her forearm gauntlets.

"Does it? I wasn't exactly paying attention earlier," I admit, rubbing the back of my head. The slightest giggle escapes the girl's lips as she jumps from the back of one of the grimm, shuffling over and putting a hand on my shoulder.

"Are you only using a wooden spear for this?" her eyes glance between me and the ursa major behind me.

"I…have no weapon of my own. I had to improvise." At this moment, the roar of the ursa major brings both of our minds back to the grimm.

"Well, improvise a little bit more, please," Jade's arms tense, blades ready for combat as I grip my spear and aim it forward. Before either of us can make a move, a familiar-looking tomahawk sticks itself in the creature's face. This action precedes a peppering of bullets that force the creature to the ground almost immediately.

"Aruna?" I let the name hang in the air as I step over to the ursa major's head and pluck the collapsible tomahawk from its skull. The sound of people coming out from the nearby brushes draws my attention.

"Did you miss me, Kevin?" the girl with the shoulder-length shimmering red-orange hair twirls her remaining tomahawk absentmindedly in her left hand. Behind her is a tall blonde in a motorcycle bodysuit, leather gloves on her hands, a pair of red goggles on her head, and what appears to be a giant machine gun on her back. She throws her head back and laughs, putting her hands on her hips as she joins Aruna and I in the middle of the clearing.

"Did you see how fast that thing went down? Like, _whoom_, and it was gone!" the blonde smiles, sending her golden eyes in my direction for a second.

"Yeah," I hand Aruna her weapon, casting my glance off to the side, and noticing Jade on top of the downed ursa major and sawing away at its back with her armblades. "Um, Jade, what are you doing?" One of the back spines snaps up into her grasp with a resounding crack before she looks up.

"Oh, well, uh, you said you have no real weapon, so I thought you could use these," the girl pulls her body into a hunched position while tossing the back spine to me. _So she's shy._ I extend my hand and catch the sixteen-inch bone, twirling it lightly in my hands to appraise the piece. "I-is that okay?"

"What? Oh, yeah, this should actually work perfectly," I smile, looking up at the brunette. I hope that my expression is enough to convey my appreciation, as I was never good with such things. While she works on the second spine, I slide my makeshift spear into the space between the backpack and my back, "sheathing" it for later. "So, Aruna, how's initiation doing for you so far?"

"I'm more concerned about you, Kevin," she rolls her pale blue eyes as she collapses both tomahawks and slides them into their places at her hips. "Still running on whatever you can find?"

"I couldn't get the forge license in time, okay? Not all of us can know exactly what they want to do right away," I kick the dirt at my feet, looking down and watching the particles puff up in a cloud before settling again. Jade bumps my shoulder before putting the second spin in my line of sight. I utter a small thanks before taking the thing in my other hand.

"Well, at least you're still alive. So, who's your pretty partner here?" Aruna smirks, her hair shimmering as she steps back and crosses her arms at Jade.

"I-I'm Jade…Yamihari."

"Nice to meet ya. Aruna Bromwell," my childhood friend sticks her hand out for a handshake. Jade seems startled briefly by the crisp action, but returns the gesture.

"And I'm Ember Rosemary!" the blonde interjects, waving to both of us. I can't help but chuckle at her enthusiasm. Coupled with her choppy bangs and motorcycle getup, I get the feeling that she's pretty spontaneous…and a trouble magnet.

"Kevin Nakamura," I nod in her direction.

"Well, now that introductions are over," Aruna points into the distance, "We should head to the temple."

"Right," I fall in step with her as she continues on, Jade and Ember following closely behind us.


	3. Chapter 3

A/N This is the final initiation chapter. After this actual story will start to come, mostly focused around developing team relations and general information, as well as weaponry.

Dasmac: Wait you can nickname guest reviews? Sweetness this site thinks of everything. Also I was thinking something similar, although there will be a continuous focus on the narrator's otherwise fighting abilities until then.

"Does anyone else smell fire?" Jade interrupts the silence of our group. I sniff the air briefly, recognizing the scent of smoking wood.

"Aruna," I drag out her name accusingly.

"What? I didn't use my semblance the entire time we've been here, I swear," she turns and deadpans at me.

"Of course, the girl with the _fire_ semblance didn't start the _fire_," I roll my eyes before the sound of howling beowolves accompanies the sound of crackling wood. I can vaguely hear other human voices shouting, but not enough to discern any specific words.

"Maybe we should just go. The teachers will surely solve the fire problem if it gets out of hand," Jade suggests.

"Yeah, I agree," Aruna turns to face the front again, her shoulder length hair almost smacking me in my face.

"Or we could investigate what started the fire!"

"I heard grimm. No," Aruna immediately shuts down her partner's idea.

"Aw, it would've been fun," Ember sulks, falling back in line behind Jade.

"We're on a mission, Ember. Let's try to stay on it. We can do something crazy _after_ initiation," I turn briefly and offer to the tall blonde.

"Yes!" she celebrates to herself before silence consumes the group again. After another ten minutes of walking with no success or intrigue, I can't help but yawn, deciding to tap Aruna on the shoulder.

"What is it?"

"I'm bored," I drag out the word. "Race you to the temple?"

"You think you can beat me?" she throws an amused look at me.

"A race? I like races!" Ember hops on the balls of her feet, a smile on her face.

"Ooh, city girl thinks she has a chance against the master?" I smirk, moving to be right beside Aruna. "Try me."

"Fine. If you lose, you're doing the dishes for a week!" she slides her tomahawks off of her hips, letting them unfold before she takes off, using the weapons occasionally to swing from the branches.

"We're at school now, there aren't any dishes to wash anyway!" I laugh as I pump my aura into my legs and leap after her, jumping from tree to tree as I slowly gain height. Behind me, I can hear a faint whistling sound before Jade appears in my line of sight, running seamlessly across the forest floor. And then there's Ember, who occasionally fires from her giant machine gun in order to get extra bursts of momentum. As we near a clearing, I finally catch up to Aruna, and we both dive out of the trees and roll onto the ground, but we all stop in our tracks at the sound of a girlish scream.

"Someone's in trouble," Ember sings, almost childishly, hefting her underslung weapon in her right hand with ease.

"Sounds like it," I agree. Jade, who I'd lost track of a while back in our race, suddenly appears behind me.

"S-should we go help?"

"Wha-!" I jump away from the surprise, both ursa spikes poised to strike what I instinctually think is a threat. "Oh, Jade. There you are."

"I recommend we keep moving. If someone's in trouble, their partner should be able to help them," Aruna twirls one tomahawk around mindlessly for a few seconds.

"Speaking of trouble," I mumble, suddenly hyper-aware of the sounds of scuffling claws and padded feet all around us. A howl precedes the sudden onslaught of ursai and beowolves rushing into the clearing.

"Ember, mow down whatever you can! The rest of us will hold off whatever comes…where'd Jade go?" Aruna frantically looks around for my partner, who seems to have disappeared again while us three get into a triangle formation. The noise of metal against bone snaps my attention to my right, where I see Jade's form jump above the crowd of grimm, focused on her, before her body turns into a strange translucent red glimmer of light—save for her blades. This new ghost-like form of Jade descends into the crowd, and within a few seconds, that sound of metal is heard again as the creatures' heads behind the front lines disappear.

"Well, my partner's a badass, eh?" I grip the ursa spikes in my hands before turning and focusing on the other half of the horde.

"It makes up for your own lack of ability, Kevin," Aruna's elbow jabs my ribs. I can almost feel the smirk playing across her lips as we dive into combat. With adrenaline running through my veins, I lunge to the side, letting my arm trail behind and cut through the arm of the beowolf. Once it's incapacitated, I whirl on my heel and plunge the other spike through the soft spot between its neck and head. Aruna seems to be holding her own quite well, considering the power of fire versus the creatures of grimm. With flaming tomahawks in hand, she seems to have no problem rendering anything that comes near her immobile or dead. Ember seems to be doing fine, unleashing a hailstorm of bullets from the machine gun in her right hand as well as from the heavy pistol that's in her left.

Meanwhile, I'm stuck swinging the broken-off body parts of a dead animal to slash through my opponents. Jade's attacks from within the grimm's ranks lessens the pressure immensely, making it easier on my part to flip and kick through the beowolves that come in my range. Behind this sort of infantry are the ursai, attempting to tank our damage from the less-armored beowolves behind them until they can get close enough. Jade's apparent ghosting ability and Ember's giant gun seem to be enough to make this plan useless while Aruna and I pick off the rest.

I jump over the next beowolf's low tackle, corkscrewing on the way down to give myself stability and momentum as I dig my heels into its back, jumping from there with a roundhouse kick to get the next one. Three close in on me from all sides, so I fling one of the ursa spikes as hard as I can at the second-nearest one while I sidestep the closest one, driving my spike into its throat and throwing it to the ground, interrupting the third one so that a few bullets from Ember's pistol can kill it.

Jade lunges in front of me to defend my position while I back up, taking out my wooden spear again and letting aura flow over the branches. Once my partner knocks out the ursa directly in front of me, I jump back into the fray, weapon extended to stab the vulnerable beowolf immediately behind the falling tank. Once my weapon's prongs pierce its hide, I pull the weapon back into both of my hands, swinging it up and snapping it to be parallel with the ground, effectively tossing the skewered body into the next animal before I jab the back end of my spear into the muzzle of another grimm.

"Here you go," Jade holds out two more large ursa spikes, evidently taken from one of the fallen tanks around us.

"Thanks," I pick the weapons from her outstretched hands. I do my best to give her a reassuring smile, seeing as her head is down in an almost adorably shy manner. "So, time to get those relics and beat it?"

"We keep getting distracted," Aruna grumbles. "If I didn't know any better I'd say that one of you was carrying a jar of red sap with you this entire time."

"You know I can't stand sugar," I roll my eyes as we continue on to the temple…again. This time, to our luck, we're able to spot the temple, just over the hill, but before we can reach the peak and head down it to reach the relics, a nevermore circles in the air above it.

"Oh, seriously?" Aruna mutters, ducking down. The avian grimm stops moving briefly to flap its wings hard towards the temple, its feathers firing out like darts and to the ground. The yells of humans reach our ears.

"It sounds like we've got a problem," I observe.

"Ember, think you can hit it from here?" Aruna turns to her partner.

"We have no way of fighting that thing except for me. I think it's safer to…oh, it's leaving." Ember points to the sky.

"Perfect," I smirk to myself, leaping over the ledge of our hangout and quickly skidding down the hilltop to the temple. In the corner of my eye, I notice a deathstalker tail disappear over another crest to our right. _Oh, those people are in for so much shit. _I walk quickly over to the semicircle of pedestals, noticing many objects already gone from their places. With a shrug, I pluck one of them off of their stands.

"A beautiful Queen for the ladies," I toss the onyx chess piece over to Aruna as she steps onto the temple grounds. "And a matching piece for miss armblade and I."

"You could've waited for us, you know," Aruna rolls her eyes, putting her hand up and letting the chess piece land in her palm. "But thank you."

"And off we go!" Ember puts her arm around Jade's shoulder. The shorter girl squirms out of her grip with a few grunts of effort, falling back against me with a small squeak. I click my tongue and stick my hand out to catch her at the waist.

"Come on, Jade." I can't hold back the amused smile that lights up my features as we follow the other pair.

"Aruna Bromwell, Jade Yamihari, Ember Rosemary, Kevin Inoshi: You four collected the white queen pieces. From now on, you will be known as team Burn," Ozpin stoically glances at us from the other end of the stage. On the projected screen behind us, each of our pictures rearranges themselves, carrying our last initials with them as they get in the same order that Ozpin said our names. BYRN. _Interesting_.

"Led by: Aruna Bromwell," the headmaster announces.

"Congrats, Fire Girl," I nudge her shoulder with my elbow, all four of us smiling.

"Oh, come here," she rolls her eyes before grabbing my arm and pulling me into a hug.

"Wha—," I reach out with my hand and manage to snag Jade's slender wrist, dragging the shy girl into the fray instead of holding me back like I expected. Jade has a similar surprise reaction that I had, a brief noise of surprise passing her lips as her body collides with Aruna's and mine.

"Group hugs!" Ember suddenly lifts all of us up in her arms. All of us can't help but laugh as the blonde puts us back down and we walk off the stage.


	4. Chapter 4

"Uh, what are you doing?" Aruna glances down at me as I push the bedframe towards the back end of the room.

"Separating: What's it look like?" With another large shove, the bed is on the other side, with the other two, leaving one alone in the corner on the left side of the room and farthest from the window. Jumping so that I land on my back in the lone bed, I look up at the three other members of my team. "Mine." I gesture to the other three, announcing, "Yours. I'll get some dividers up later."

"Dividers?" Ember cocks her head to the side, confused.

"Makes sense," Aruna shrugs, tugging at the haphazardly moved bed so that all three are lined up with the headboards to the wall. Luckily, the room setup will let me separate the beds, and add another curtain to separate that half of the room with the side with the large desk, window, door, and washroom. "I call the window!"

Jade gingerly places her stuff alongside the bed closest to me, while Ember takes the one in between her partner and mine. Once the blonde collapses onto her mattress, her hair cascading in waves around her head, she turns in my direction. "So, what do we do now?"

"I was planning on putting in my forge permissions with the staff, and then sleeping," I shrug, clasping my hands behind my head.

"Aw, but you said we could do something fun," Ember complains, sitting up and pouting with her golden eyes.

"Well, I still need to put in the forge permissions either way, but what do you want to do afterwards?"

"Ooh, we could sneak out and go swimming in the pond!" the girl slides her red biking goggles from her forehead to over her eyes, concealing them in a dark tint.

"No," Aruna furrows her brow at the blonde.

"We could a-always go to the library," Jade suggests, pushing her long bangs out of her eyes.

"Dude, the library's boring!" Ember collapses again onto her mattress.

"Well, you all can figure out something fun to do—I'm sure our leader can come up with something or another—And I'm going to go get those forge permission papers up and running." I pull myself to my feet, glad to have the most immediate access to the door, and leave the three women to their arguing.

/this is a line break since apparently ff doesn't like them/

"This is…_so_ much paperwork," I groan as the secretary pulls out stack after stack of documentation.

"Sorry, but you _are_ working in a room loaded with possible explosives, large reservoirs of dust, fire, and molten metals," the old woman clicks her tongue as she takes out another packet. "This is the last one."

"Fifty-six pages of liabilities, rules, and permission guidelines," I give a low whistle as I let my thumb roll through the papers before picking up the whole stack. "There's no due date for this, right?"

"Preferably before you graduate," she shrugs.

"Right," I drag out the word as I get up and leave the office, slowly reading over the words as I walk.

/

"What?" I look over the room, which had previously been a bland beige. Now, it's decorated with posters, Christmas lights, speakers, and a TV.

"Well, you were gone for over half an hour," Aruna shrugs, hooking the last of the Christmas light rope into a spot on the wall.

"And you've decked out the entire room in that time," I let my being impressed slip into my voice, sliding my hand across one of the rock posters on the wall adjacent to the door.

"Jade becomes some version of Spider-Man when she's using her semblance. It makes it easy to put the posters on the high ceilings," Ember explains. Jade shrinks down at the praise, her bangs covering her flitting eyes.

"Well, leave some room for my own crap, okay?" I drop the stack of permission papers onto the nightstand by my bed, which they must've found somewhere.

"Okay," Jade's meek voice replies as she continues to fill the low bookcase that replaces the nightstand that should be next to her own bed. "How did the p-permissions go?"

"A _lot_ of paperwork," I groan. "Did you figure out what you wanted to do with our last two hours of daylight?"

"We found out that there's an arcade setup made by the upperclassmen. Sounded like fun," Ember put another strip of tape on the corner of a poster.

"Oh, this is going to be tons of fun," I crack my knuckles. "Aruna and I used to spend all day virtual fighting."

"I was thinking more of the DDR machine," Aruna counters, a smirk growing on her lips.

"Oh, you sly bastard. You know I suck at those," I narrow my eyes at my friend.

"Exactly, my dear sociopath," she puts her hands on her lips and leans forward.

"Let's go," I roll my eyes and stand up off of the bed.

/

The unfortunate truth? For all my skill on the battlefield, I have no sense of rhythm. Aruna, Ember, and Jade, on the other hand? They're too amazing. Ember had different music playing in her headphones the _entire time_, Aruna is a natural at everything, and Jade's fighting style gives her an acquired skill at quick movements.

Needless to say that I was totally destroyed, but my three teammates were all equally destroyed by another first year: Lie Ren. Many of the first years seemed to have found the establishment in the dorm basement, especially considering a lack of any other entertainment for our first night as official Beacon students.

"Man, that was _awesome_!" Ember jumps up and pumps her fist into the air. Then, she bends down and hugs Aruna from the side. "Thank you!"

"Wha—hey, I didn't do anything! Seriously, it's fine," the redhead smiles and glances up at her teammate. A faint giggle passes from Jade's lips as she glances as the ground, accidentally bumping her shoulder into mine.

"Let's just get back to our dorms. Classes start tomorrow," I let out a content sigh before beginning to climb the staircase up to our room. I can hear Ember and Aruna chatting jovially about their experiences tonight.

"Right." Jade nods, turning around briefly to check on the other two members of our team. "Come on, you two."


	5. Chapter 5

I wake up to the sound of a whistle…muffled by the door. One thing I didn't account for in my choice of bed location was being next to the wall that separated room from hallway. I groan, pulling my body into a sitting position. When I look to my left, I see three girls my own age, resting peacefully. I also notice the alarm clock on Aruna's nightstand almost 16 feet away, telling me that the time is 8:00. The light streaking in through the window seems to highlight my partner's pale skin, while casting my childhood friend in a heavenly glow.

"Damn," I shake the thoughts from my head, getting onto my feet and going down to the window side. I stop at the foot of Aruna's bed, noting her sleeping form so that I know where her feet are under the blanket. Looking left and right, I adopt a mischievous grin, jumping up and tucking my feet under me so that once I'm over her mattress I can slam my legs onto the bed with as much force as possible.

"Wake up!" Aruna's head seems to hop up from her pillow as her blue irises snap open.

"What the…Kevin!" Aruna's eyes settle on my face as she pulls her body up to the headboard. Her face contorts into a look of embarrassment as she tugs the blanket out from under me in order to cover herself…which I find funny because I know she's wearing a pretty modest faded T-shirt anyway.

"Classes start in an hour. Thought I'd let you know, Team Leader," I pick myself up and slide off of her bed.

"Don't _ever_ do that again, jeez," she glares daggers at me as I go over to the wardrobe beside the work desks.

"W-what's going…what's going on?" Jade rises from her own mattress, stretching her arms above her head and yawning with a cute noise.

"School, my dear partner," I sigh, unhooking my uniform from the coathanger and picking up the box of shower supplies from under my bed. "Deadbolt the door if you're busy changing when I come back."

/

While we're sitting in the lecture hall, I drum my fingers on the long table in front of me. In the corner of the sort of stage that the rows of benches and tables are directed towards is a golden bust of a man with a wicked mustache. There's also a dark cage in the corner…rattling. Jade seems content with her large book, Aruna's busy texting away on her scroll, and Ember is zoning out to the music in her headphones. She also has her legs up on the table, accentuating the fact that she's wearing well-fitted suit pants instead of the standard red pleated skirt.

The other students seem equally content with chatting amongst themselves and throwing papers around, but right before the class bell rings, eight students come barreling through the large double doors, crashing and tumbling into each other and landing in a pile of limbs. The bell rings.

"Of course it's _that_ group," I remark, tapping Ember's leg to signal that she needs to pull them back to the space below the table for etiquette. The red-caped girl: Ruby, as well as the blonde boy: Jaune Arc, and their respective teams, seem to get into a lot of problems on their own. Fighting a Nevermore _and_ a Deathstalker at initiation? Really?

The teacher…in a remarkable match to the golden bust in the corner…appears on the stage, and starts to lecture the students. As he starts to talk, I recognize the sound of a long personal anecdote incoming, and let myself zone out. My hand moves mindlessly across the paper I'd set in front of me slowly doodling out the image of a beowolf with its teeth bared and claws reared up to strike. I'm interrupted by a short pause in the professor's boisterous voice, followed by a shrill female outcry from two rows below me. I glance down, seeing the white head of hair with its off-center high ponytail. Her hand is raised high in the air, and she's standing up. A few other weak hands are raised as well, but the professor—Port, I think—chooses the snow-haired woman. She gets up and leaves out the double doors, most likely to change into her combat attire.

The fight, which Professor Port initiates by slamming his axe over the door of the rattling cage, lasts a short while. Weiss, who is a member of team RWBY, seems to struggle with the rolling boarbatusk, and the constant attempts to help from the Ruby girl and her team doesn't seem to help her mood at all. In fact, it seems to just irritate her more.

"Marvelous! It seems we are in the presence of a true huntress!" the professor exclaims as Weiss removes the rapier from the boarbatusk's belly.

"A true huntress with anger issues," I remark. The girl stomps off of the stage, and after a few minutes of the students talking among themselves, the class bell rings.

/

Next is combat class, so we all change into our own combat attire in the first fifteen minutes of the block. I walk out of the locker rooms, aware of a few glares directed at me from the other men in the class. Averting my eyes from theirs, I snap the collar of my leather jacket forward and go to the armory in the back of the large room, pulling a straightsword and a rounded diamond shield for my own use.

"Are you ready?" Jade glances at me from her seat as I come over and sit down next to her.

"I'm as ready as I'll ever be," I mumble, seeing that this classroom is divided so that there are three stage-arenas surrounding the sets of bleachers. On the upside, attention will be divided so that only a third of the students are focused on me. Before I can really appreciate this fact, my student picture appears next to the Ruby girl on the leftmost arena board. "Oh, fuck."

"Hiya, I'm Ruby!" the somewhat short girl sticks her hand out, a smile on her face.

"Kevin. Pleasure," I shake the extended limb, looking into her silver eyes briefly.

"So, you don't have a custom weapon?" she gestures to the chipped diamond shield on my arm, its longer point directed so that its point extends past the length of my hand. It's almost like a dull and wide blade.

"I never got my permissions in on time back in Vacuo. I'm trying to remedy that here, but it's a lot of paperwork," I rub the back of my head sheepishly.

"Well, I don't want to be unfair, but I want to show off my own weapon," the girl taps her chin in thought momentarily before perking up. "Ooh, I could not use my semblance! Does that work for you?" At that moment, the ready buzzer rings out above us, signaling for us to take our places at opposite ends of the stage. As I walk, I can't help but retort under my breath.

"Oh, sure, the speed demon is going to come at me with only her giant gun blade! Fun," I turn around once I'm in permission, raising my voice so my opponent can hear me. "That sounds good! Better than nothing."

"Right!" Ruby unfolds her giant sniper-scythe bastard weapon, crossing it over her body and grabbing the priming lever in her opposite hand, the blade/barrel end of the deadly metal pointed behind her. I take a strange stance, considering I have a shield, keeping my body weight on my back leg while sticking my front one slightly forward, aiming with my left hand my sword, held sideways but pointed at my opponent. My right arm is aimed straight backwards, cocked at the elbow to have the shield aimed in the same direction. Our aura meters appear under our pictures on the board, with the red-yellow-green light arrangement appearing between them. The red lights up. Then the yellow. Then the green turns on, accompanying a buzzer, signaling the beginning of the match.

"This is going to hurt," I mutter as the little girl in the red hood fires her weapon behind her, propelling her forward before she flourishes her weapon to bring it swinging towards me at surprising speeds.


	6. Chapter 6

I jump back at an angle, straightening my body so that the curved blade of the gun-scythe swipes harmlessly in the air right beside me. Instantly, I shift my feet in order to lunge right back at my opponent with a counterattack. My left arm is stretched out with the point aimed at the girl's abdomen as she swings the scythe around for a more sidelong second swing. To my luck, I'm able to steady my shield arm in time to deflect the blow and continue forward. The force of it unfortunately makes me hit a little bit too far to the left, passing right by the red-clad warrior.

I take my momentum and pitch forward, rolling up to my feet and swinging my shield behind me, deflecting the third hit that was supplied by Ruby's weapon's momentum. Twisting my arm slightly, I nook the blade so that I can lunge forward again with my elbow, invading the safe range of her weapon's use and knocking her in the head. The girl tumbles backwards, springing to her feet and then jumping back again, closing the blades of her weapon and taking aim down the barrel.

"Figures," I sheath my sword and keep my shield in front of me, letting my aura surround my legs and giving me the power edge I need to strafe side to side and dodge her rounds before I take the unexpected route of leaping at the prismatic barrier that blocks the end of the stage facing the audience. The clear barrier is meant to prevent anything leaving the arena and striking at the spectators, but I use it as a fourth wall to jump at an angle back down to my opponent, my shield held across my body as I descend. As I swing it across where the girl is, I find the barrel held perpendicular to the ground, parrying my assault.

The scythe blade unfurls again as I draw my sword, suddenly initiating a bout of short range combat. This ends with my sword being flung to the other end of the arena as Ruby spins around again, her blade coming at me from my right, although it seems to be too far out for it to hit me in the side.

"Crap," I exclaim, shifting my body into my original ready position, my open left palm facing the girl. Just in time, my shield moves to catch the blade of the scythe, which would've wrapped around my neck otherwise. My eyes manage to catch the slightest distinct movement of my opponent tensing her finger to pull the trigger. Knowing that the recoil would normally bring the blade down on my neck at impeccable speeds, I shift my feet sideways and straighten my forward leg as a root, stabilizing against the recoil from the giant weapon.

Ruby appears to not expect this, as instead of flying backwards, the recoil's energy rebounds off of my shield, sending the weapon behind me, and dragging the girl forward. She stumbles on her feet before, in a hopeful attempt, I swing my back leg at her, sending her flying out of melee range in a single hit, and making her drop her weapon. I try to take full advantage of the distraction and rush forward with my shield behind me and all intentions of slicing the corner of it at her. Unfortunately, the girl seems to have as much agility as I do, rolling from the hit to come right back up to her feet and then backflip from my swipe.

You'd think a weaponless girl who relied on her custom gun-scythe and semblance for everything would be easy to take out for her remaining aura. Wrong. Some semblance of body control is necessary for her to be able to move so fast without falling, and Ruby utilizes this now. Every swing I take pushes her back, but also brings me closer to my cast-aside sword. As I take an uppercut with my supposedly-defensive shield, Ruby sidesteps, dashing past my guard and elbowing me as she runs to her own weapon. Seeing no other option, I take the opportunity to reclaim my own sword.

"Let's see if this can do anything," I mumble, ducking and rolling from an overhead cut from her reclaimed weapon. Gauging my aura percentage, I sacrifice a portion of it in order to let it flow through my legs and arms, taking an edited speed bonus for myself and charging headlong at the small girl. This additive makes it easy for me to engage in another bout of exchanged close range blows and gunfire, knocking her down so that her own aura levels are lower than mine. Unfortunately, a sudden kick finds my stomach, interrupting my ability to continue the barrage before I get slapped by the side of the gun-scythe. As I try to recover, Ruby shoots through my defenses right before I can get my shield to defend me…briefly. The tip of her weapon's blade nicks the edge of my shield, ripping it out front of me. Seeing no other option, I begin to throw in my own flips and spins to avoid her retaliatory series of attacks.

After twisting my body over a sideways cut, I roll under the next, coming up to my feet just in time to hold my shield up and deflect the third. As I try to take advantage of her momentum taking her for another turn around and lunge forward with my sword, the flat edge of her weapon snaps down all of a sudden, knocking me sideways. Recovering…again, I hold my shield up to block the next strike, only to find it coming short by barely a centimeter. As the barrel passes in front of my shield, a bullet collides with it, its force echoing through my body and sending me backwards.

My aura falls into the red as a silver curved blade pokes my back. I sigh as Professor Goodwitch comes over, delivering her little tournament-style rules speech. Picking myself off of the ground, I sheath my weapons on my back and walk over to Ruby.

"Good match, Rose," I extend my hand.

"You too, Kevin," she smiles, shaking my hand before skipping off to her teammates.

"Can't really expect you to beat the child prodigy without a custom weapon," Aruna offers as I sit down next to her.

"I guess…I can't wait to get something to call my own," I sink into my seat.

"At least you're not…that kid," Aruna gestures to the middle arena, where the blonde boy charges at the large man in armor, who heaves his mace off of his shoulder and casually drops it in front of the blonde's sword, blocking it before bearing down on him in a one-sided deadlock. Funnily enough, the blonde boy seems to use the same weapon setup that I was previously using.

"Fair enough," I shrug as the blonde gets wrecked by the mace-wielder.


	7. Chapter 7

"Team bonding?" I glance up at Aruna from my seat.

"Yes! It's important!" our team leader rests her hands on her hips. Jade looks up from where she's resting on her bed to see the sudden exclamation, while Ember seems entirely bored and taking to seeing how far off the her own mattress she can go without falling off. After seeing the other half of our team going back to their own activities, Aruna puts her hand on my desk for support as she leans down.

"Besides, you can't rely on me for _all_ your socialization," she whispers.

"Wha—Aruna, I'm fine," I glare at my friend, looking up at her.

"Kevin," the redhead warns. "You've been sitting at that desk all morning. I'm ordering you to join us for a day in Vale." Her eyes seem to just barely flicker over to my partner.

"But—"

"Do it."

"Fine." I slide out from my chair, standing up to meet Aruna's eyes. "This isn't just about me, is it?"

"Your partner seems to have the same problem you do. I just want you guys to be able to at least be comfortable with us and each other. She's your partner, after all. Come on."

"Can we stop whispering, now?"

"Just go get changed. We leave in twenty minutes," she flashes her alluring smile at me. Damn signature grin made her a near-invincible and influential student at our primary combat school. Aruna walks over to the makeshift barrier we put between the bed areas and the rest of the room, walking through the sliding doors and closing it behind her. I can hear her announcing the trip to Vale to the other two members of our team, and the very enthusiastic response from Ember. I can't help but chuckle before going into my own section of the room.

/

"So, what do normal people do in town?" I peek at Aruna from over Jade's shoulder, said brunette being positioned between us.

"Shopping!" Ember suggests, pointing her index finger into the air.

"Just mess around, go into some shops. Maybe see a movie?" Aruna shrugs.

"I'm gonna get so lost among the girl-talk," I mumble to myself. Apparently Jade is able to pick up on my words.

"I grew up as an assassin living in the woods. I don't understand it either," she whispers into my ear.

"Ha, right," I chuckle and glance at her. She pouts and looks straight forward again.

"Come on, let's go!" Ember runs forward into the city. Being a resident to the city before Beacon, it makes sense that she be the one to lead us around. I roll my eyes before giving chase.

/

"The Forever Fall forest?" I glance down at the scroll in my hands, resting against the wall. The others are also looking at their scrolls, scattered around the workspace of our room. After a long day of parading around Vale, there's a small pile of bags in the corner, from the girls' shopping trip.

"It looks like our combat class is going into Forever Fall," Aruna reads over the message. "Collecting sap for one of the other professors…Sap that's known to attract grimm."

"Sounds like an adventure," I remark.

"Yep," the redhead nods before looking at Ember and Jade, the two chatting quietly between each other. "Are you guys ready?"

"Always!" Ember puts one hand on her hip while pumping the other fist into the air.

"Ready enough," Jade mumbles. I'd learned during our time in the city that she was, in fact, actually an assassin raised in the woods. She wasn't joking. Her semblance made it easy for her to slip in and out of areas and kill her targets without being seen. A scary thought, especially since she didn't really elaborate on what her semblance was just yet. All I know is that she turns into a faint red form when she uses it. My best guess is that her semblance allows her move through objects as if they weren't there.

"Well, let's get some rest. We're going on a field trip tomorrow," our team leader puts her hand on my shoulder reassuringly before leaving the room with her shower kit.

"You heard her," I pack up the documents on my desk and go into my section of the room. "Goodnight, guys."

"Goodnight," Jade's quiet voice flutters through the thin barrier between us.

/

"Yes, the Forever Fall is beautiful, but we aren't here for sight-seeing. Professor Peach has asked us to collect some of the sap from these trees for her. Collect one jar's worth per person," Goodwitch orders.

"Let's go, team," Aruna gestures for us to follow her as she treks into the throng of red trees. The other teams seem to split off in a similar manner. Aruna tap one of the thicker trees in the area, and Ember's response is to walk up to it, a knife in between two of her fingers, and punch the trunk of the tree. The blade embeds itself deep into the trunk, so that when the blonde rips it out, red sap begins to stream from the wound. Aruna takes her jar and puts it under the steady flow.

"That's…efficient," I mutter, finding another tree and digging the tip of my borrowed shortsword into it. Beside me, Jade crosses her arms over her chest and adopts an amused expression as I struggle with the dense bark of the tree. After I fail to be able to drive the blade any further than a half-inch into the trunk, backing away with a sigh, my partner starts to giggle, the sound a short tinkling of bells barely audible above the din of the forest.

"What? It's not as easy as you'd think," I jokingly turn my back on the girl.

"Let me show you how it's done," she smiles at me, walking up to the tree and deploying the blades on her arms. The three segments extend before flattening out to give the illusion of a single blade, rather than one made of three pieces. The next thing I know, Jade's body turns into a translucent red sort of mist, and she plunges one of her blades into the tree trunk. As her body returns into a physical form, the trunk of the tree groans before spilling its contents.

"What?" I collect my jaw from the floor and walk up to the girl as she throws her hair over her shoulder.

"Physics. When my blade stops being affected by my semblance, space needs to be made for its mass to exist. The tree breaks where the blade is," she focuses her brown eyes on me. "Get it?"

"I…think I get it," I take out one of the glass jars and stick it under the stream of red sap. "Any other secrets about your semblance I should know?"

"I can't phase through aura. I can selectively ghostify different areas of my body at a time, and my momentum is increased dramatically. There's no wind resistance for a ghost, after all," she grins.

"You're not _actually _a ghost, right?"

"No, I'm very much alive."

"Alright. Let's get the rest of this sap." I look back at the jar, which is half-full now. Jade nods in agreement. Then we hear the roar of an ursa.


	8. Chapter 8

"Was that an ursa?" Jade straightens herself out and looks in the direction the noise came from.

"Sounds like it," I grab my sword and start off after it. The sound of Jade's boots against the forest floor follows close behind me. The echoes of an ursa and heavy footfalls come from a clearing, but it suddenly stops right before we can cross the final few trees. I pull myself to a halt, spreading my arm to the side to signal Jade to stop as well. Quickly surveying the scene, I notice a blonde head of hair standing near a large decapitated ursa. The figure moves to help a large armored student to his feet.

The blonde seems to say something to the larger man before stalking off and out of the clearing. Just barely, I notice three other bodies on the opposite end, starting to leave. "Ruby, Jaune, Pyrhha, Weiss, and Cardin. What happened here?"

Jade doesn't stick around to respond at all, already ghosting to the other end, jumping over the dead ursa and past Cardin. I sigh before running to follow. She seems to have stopped the trio.

"…myself, but it seems that that chapter is done," Pyrhha finishes some explanation to my partner.

"What happened here?" I glance over the other people in the conversation.

"Jaune defeated an ursa and saved Cardin and Pyrhha can apparently control—mmph!" Ruby starts talking at a mile a minute before Pyrhha's gloved hand clamps over her mouth.

"The grimm are supposed to be sparse in this forest. The fact than any ursa, let alone an ursa _major_, is here spells trouble," I mumble my thoughts out loud, looking back to the grimm corpse, which is already slowly fading away into a black smoke. A low growl comes out from the side. "Yep, there it is."

"Not a problem!" Ruby unfolds her giant weapon before vanishing in a burst of speed and…rose petals. Jade also already went ghost, only the tips of her blades still solid as she spins and flips through the grimm, Ruby doing the same. In a matter of seconds, all six are gone.

"Woah," I can't help but stare in awe at me partner as she steadily rises to her feet and retracts her arm blades.

"She _would_ just run headlong into combat like that," Weiss rolls her eyes and crosses her arms, clearly not holding the same reverence for my own partner.

"Let's not bring this moment up with the teachers. No need for them to stress over a solved problem," the champion turns and walks back in the direction of the main group of students. The snow-haired girl turns briskly on her heel and follows in turn.

"Well, at least we got the job done," I blink before taking a more detoured route back. Jade soon appears beside me, both jars of sap in hand.

"You forgot these."

"Ooh, right," I grimace, taking the full containers from her. "Let's get going."

/

"Cardin seems like less of a jerk," Aruna squints at team CRDL from a few tables down. Their leader continually glances over at the table that teams RWBY and JNPR occupy, clearly aggravated. Luckily, he isn't throwing food or doing anything else stupid to the blonde boy anymore. Whatever had been going on the last few weeks between them is clearly over.

"He's still an annoyance," Ember laments, taking a bite from her burger. A small yelp snaps all of us to attention. The girl with the cockney accent and the bunny ears.

"There he goes again," I grumble, standing up.

"What are you doing?" Aruna's eyes focus on me, their crystal blue startling me into freezing briefly.

"What I've always done," I shrug.

"What's what he's always done?" Ember slides her headphones down onto her neck and whispers to Aruna.

"Um…violence."

"He's gone," Jade remarks.

"Shit." I chuckle to myself, picking up on the conversation left in my wake as I walk up to the table team CRDL and one rabbit faunus are gathered around.

"This never gets old," Cardin looks to his teammates. Based on the past few days, he seems to have been bullying the other faunus in the school more and more…probably to make up for not going after Jaune. The boy with the slicked back blue-grey hair calls Cardin to my attention before I can make myself known.

"What do you want?" the tall brute turns around casually, his grip tightening on the faunus' ear. I wince at her small cry of pain. Before I continue, I look back at my own team and the JNPR/RWBY table. I click my tongue and flash a smile at them before hardening my gaze against the Winchester.

"It's not what I want, per se. It's more what every other person in this room wants," I send a reassuring glance at the faunus before stepping forward. "And every other person in the room wants to see…this." I let the barriers surrounding my mind drop as I flood aura into my cocked fist. A grin fills my face as the large man stands up and raises his arms to block the attack. My limb, however, pushes right past the defense and into his face, sending him sprawling on top of the lunch table and into the plates and meals rested on it. The teammates sitting on top of the table jumps back from the object slamming next to him.

"I'd run, kiddos," a gleam fills my eyes as I turn to the remaining three members of CRDL, clamoring around their leader. As the Winchester pulls himself to his feet, they scatter to the exit door. I can't help but laugh as I retract my fist, turning to the faunus. "Are you okay?"

"Y-yeah, I'm…fine. Thanks," she keeps her head down while keeping her chocolate eyes on me.

"No problem. Guy's a jerk, eh?" I stick my hand out, slowly so that I don't scare her. "Kevin."

"Velvet," she shakes my hand before turning and leaving.

"Hey, wait," I call out to her. She turns with her eyebrows raised in question. "My partner's kinda like you…minus the big ears. Maybe you could hang out with us all sometime."

"O-okay." I smile as I jerk my head towards the remaining members of team BYRN. Velvet follows me as I make my way back to the table.

"Team, Velvet. Velvet, team," I sit back down next to Jade and introduce the two parties.

"Aruna. I'm the leader of these fools," the redhead leans across the table and shakes the girl's hand.

"Ember," the blonde flashes a peace sign.

"Jade," my partner nods in Velet's direction before returning to her food. I sit back and watch them all start talking with each other amicably. I can't help but smile as Ember starts up some ridiculous story of her past.


	9. Chapter 9

A/N This is just a filler in order to establish some basic stuff about fighting styles and other things. The way I wanted it set up is that Kevin and Jade are mobility fighters, Ember is a goddamn DPS tank from hell, and Aruna is a sort of neutral ground. This was also to test writing team fights, as normally I only ever write 1v1 or 1v(giant army of mindless drones of some variety). Yes, Kevin changed his borrowed weapons again. In his current situation, it'd make sense for him to try some stuff out. I'm not sure how much I'll focus on the fighting aspects of this story from here on out.

/

"Teams RWBY and BYRN, up onto the stage, please," Professor Goodwitch stands atop the battle stages, as the two walls that separate it into three arenas recede into the floor.

"Oh boy," I sigh, tapping my fingers against the machine pistol at my waist. It's a different style than I've been using so far in combat classes, but Ember had already trained me into using a pistol effectively, so I thought I should try it out. My team gets up, looking to our left to see Team RWBY already prepping their weapons for combat.

"Let's do this," Aruna saunters down the stairs and to the arena. Ember taps the button on the metal strap on her right shoulder, and the giant machine gun on her back unfolds and shifts into its usable form, the handle stopping right below her hand. She lets it slip into her hand and follows our leader. I trail behind Jade as she extends her arm blades.

"I call Weiss," Aruna's gaze locks on to her target from the opposite end of the arena.

"I've always wanted to fight Yang," Ember produces her heavy pistol from her hip holster.

"Blake's my best match," Jade hunches over into a battle stance, one blade pointed forward and the other one cocked back.

"And that leaves me with…" I grimace as I see my opponent chamber a new bullet in her gun-scythe. "Ruby. Great."

"Good luck," Aruna smirks at me and puts her hand on her hip, pulling one tomahawk from the slide on her leg, unfolding it, and twirling it nonchalantly while we wait for the screen on the arena wall to update. The eight aura gauges suddenly appear on either side of the screen, with us on the right and them on the left. The traffic lights appear down the middle, with a countdown above them.

"This will be fought with standard tournament style group rules: Whichever team gets all opponents into the red simultaneously wins," Goodwitch looks between both sides of the arena.

"The hell does that even mean?" I lean over and whisper to Aruna.

"It means that if you regenerate back to above the red zone, you get to continue fighting again! Unless your last man standing gets out before you're back up," Ember shrugs.

"Does aura even regenerate that fast?" I mutter to myself.

"Approximately one percent per five minutes. The rules were edited when someone was able to regenerate aura at such a consistently strong rate that he could keep going back into combat," Jade informs me.

"I bet it was an Arc."

"Jaune's father."

"Team BYRN, are you ready?" the professor takes our attention back to the situation at hand. We all nod our affirmation. "Team RWBY, are you ready?" All four girls simply ready their weapons in response. "Alright. Let's begin."

The traffic lights start to blink, from red, to yellow, to green. The second the sounding bell rings, all four of our opponents launch themselves forward: Blake and Weiss using their semblances, and the sisters firing rounds behind them.

"Spook 'em!" Ember exclaims stepping forward and letting her weapon hail bullets at the onslaught. Team RWBY uses their respective techniques again to avoid getting run through by dust and lead.

"Divide and conquer," Jade comments before vanishing. Blake appears where she was a second ago, blades drawn, before their own little skirmish begins.

"Or at least survive," I roll to the side as Ruby slices her weapon through the arena floor and back up towards me. I take a knee and hold my sword to the side as I fire at the speed demon. The distinct sound of metal against bullet responds in turn before I stand myself up and swing my blade at my left, deflecting Ruby's scythe. Right before she can score another hit, a flash of yellow slams into her, knocking both of them onto the floor. I look to the left and see Ember slowly standing back up and returning her fist to her gun's handle. I notice a dark grey metal sticking through some shreds in her left hand's glove.

"Well that takes care of—," I feel the dull impact of Blake's cleaver/sheathe against my back. As my vision stops being blurry, I can see her manipulating her semblance in order to keep up with Jade and Ember at once. When Jade is about to cut through Blake while she's occupied with Ember, she vanishes and retreats, a flurry of ice left in her place. Jade ghosts through the ice that's holding her weapon in place before charging back at the ninja.

The quick deviation to try and stop Jade seems to have worked against Weiss as she gets knocked down by a whack of Aruna's tomahawk. The sound of gunfire forces me to turn back and hold the flat of my blade over my chest in order to avoid getting run over by a certain blonde brawler. I land at Ember's feet as she begins to fire back. Yang seems perfectly adept at retaliation fire and blocking the stream of bullets. A flash of red beelines towards Aruna, but I stand up and start firing at her feet, making Ruby focus back on me. The sound of fire crackling behind me makes me chuckle, aware of Aruna's ability to control the situation now.

"Switch!" our team leader deflects Weiss' rapier before lunging at Yang.

"Are you ready for this?" Ember ducks under Aruna's flying body as she switches targets and swinging a…drill hand…at Ruby. Her left hand is apparently robotic, which explains a lot: Especially the part about a right-handed girl hitting at least three-times harder with her left hand, as I found out during training exercises. The fiery explosion behind us gives me enough security to turn and charge at Weiss. While we exchange blows, Ruby suddenly interrupts, accidentally pushing Weiss to the ground as she swings her scythe in a tornado of slashes and fired bullets directed at me. I quickly sheathe my sword and pistol, doing a back handspring before initiating another series of flips as I avoid the barrage. Planting my feet in the ground after using a b-twist to avoid a bullet and an icicle at the same time, I divert my momentum to end up next to Ember, surprised that I'd travelled so far.

"I need this," I slip Ember's heavy pistol from her hip as I draw the machine pistol from my right side, training the sights at the partners. Ember changes from firing at Blake in order to disrupt her and give Jade and upper hand to helping me cover fire on Weiss and Ruby. The short reaper twirls her weapon in front of her while Weiss puts up an ice barrier, effectively defending them temporarily. I toss Ember her pistol back before drawing my sword and charging to the side, utilizing the transparent arena barrier to get an angle on Ruby while she redirects her own attacks at Aruna.

"Ruby!" Blake's voice sounds from behind me as I descend on the girl with my blade ready. The cleaver/sheathe smacks me across my face and sends me flying over the pair behind the ice wall. I notice Blake standing where I planned to land originally while I pick myself off the ground. Right when the ninja gets back up to turn on her original opponent, a wave of bullets knocks her back, courtesy of Ember. Another explosion draws my attention to Aruna and Yang, who are flying across the back half of the arena, a mix of the brawler's sponge-like semblance and fiery aura and the axe-wielder's semblance of fire control at work.

"Jade, your semblance doesn't let you phase through aura, right?" I jump back from a fireball launched from Weiss' rapier, watching the flames burst forth to lick at any nearby objects before being vacuumed to Aruna's location and slamming into the brawler.

"Correct," my partner ghostifies herself, vanishing into the arena floor to dodge a bullet from Blake. I sidestep a similar sentiment from Ruby, returning fire while Jade reappears behind Blake and slashes an aura-empowered X across the ninja's back.

"What happens if aura makes contact with you?"

"I'd be sent flying if I don't deactivate it. No physics, remember?" Both of us flip into the air to avoid the ice dust from Weiss. I notice Ruby wholly focused on exchanging blows with Ember, her using her speed to avoid the blonde's sheer firepower.

"Activate the thing and jump," I order. "And get ready."

"Ready for what?" Jade follows the command regardless.

"Cannonball!" I spin on the ball of my foot, catching Jade's ghost form with my kicking leg and launching her with a kick. I convert my momentum into a butterfly kick in order to avoid getting pierced by a certain fencer while Jade's ghost form barrels towards Yang, in a deadlock with Aruna. The red mirage rematerializes at the last second, cutting into Yang's aura before their bodies make contact and they're both sent sprawling. Both hit the red zone upon impact with the ground.

"One down," Aruna shrugs before tensing and bringing her tomahawks up to block Blake's two-bladed assault.

"Three to go," I swing my sword in front of me and step to the side, deflecting Ruby's scythe. She's suddenly pulverized by a small stream of bullets from Ember's machine gun, before the blonde dashes over and rams her metallic fist into the girl's weapon. The metallic clang resonates harshly through the air, Ember's attack making Ruby's scythe bounce and hit herself in the head. The rose falls into the red zone right before Ember gets frozen in a block of ice and immediately launched into the air by one of Weiss' glyphs. The landing, and subsequent shattering of the ice, makes her aura drop into the red zone as well.

"Two. Two to go," I recant my previous statement before diving and rolling away from another ice crystal.

"Kevin!" Aruna kicks Blake's cleaver from her hand before throwing one of her tomahawks at me. I seamlessly sidestep, hooking its handle with my fingers and redirecting it towards Blake with an underhanded throw. Aruna snaps her fingers and the airborne weapon explodes in a ball of fire, making it burst forward with sudden speed enough to catch Blake off guard and close enough to the red zone that Aruna can simple kick the girl once in the legs to claim victory. In the same time, I spin to my right in order to avoid a glyph-aided thrust from Weiss, holding my sword across my back in order to parry the close encounter.

Unfortunately, she uses my focus on defending myself in order to glide along another string of glyphs and stab Aruna's aura into the red zone with a flurry of ice and cold steel. _Oh, come on_, I square off against the heiress, machine pistol aimed forward and sword held above me, pointed at my opponent. Two left-handed sword-users left. One with the power of semblance-aided mobility and area-of-effect dust attacks. And the other...with a gun, I guess. As we exchange blows, the back of my head starts looking for solutions, both of our auras wearing down and approaching the red zone.

With every other parry, I try to get a bullet into Weiss' aura, to no avail. I backflip away from a side strike, taking the respite to reload the machine pistol, and lamenting the fact that I only have five bullets left. Unfortunately, it's not enough to take Weiss down to the red, and then she'd still have the dust advantage over me. She lunges again, and I manage to parry my minutely moving my blade from being positioned between us to being at my side, As steel crashes against metal, and the hilts of both sword move closer together, an idea comes to mind, regarding said dust advantage.

My already curled gun arm takes almost no time to cross the distance between being aimed in a general forward direction to at the dust-chamber revolver in the hilt of Weiss' rapier. I steady my left arm, pushing it forward in order to lock the hilts together while I pour the five remaining bullets against the dust chamber.

The resulting explosion isn't pretty, a mix of ice, fire, and small sparks of lightning erupt in the center of the arena, blowing both of us back and hitting the ground. Based on the lack of a buzzer sound as I pull myself to my feet, I can tell that we're both still…somehow…not out. I was sort of betting on her surprise being enough for her aura to be taken out. _Great_.

As I stand, I notice the heiress rising to her feet at about the same time. "Well, looks like this is a weaponless fight now, eh?" I spread my arms out wide in hope. The girl's gaze hardens as she extends her right hand out towards…her rapier. A glyph appears around the weapon's tip, embedded in the arena floor, before it flies from its location and back into her hand.

"Guess it was too much to ask for," I dive towards my own sword as she lunges with her glyphs again. I notice that we're both so close to the red that only one or two strikes could call the match as I flourish my blade, blocking the heiress' lunge a second time. Stepping back, I set my focus on the opponent, and a short bout of blocks, parries, lunges, and strikes ensues, ending with me knocking her back with the flat of my blade. Before she hits the ground, she summons a set of glyphs to seamlessly return her to her feet a few meters away. One more hit would put her in the red zone at this point. It's now that I notice the almost-hollow hilt of her rapier. The dust cartridge is absent.

"Is your weapon feeling out of balance there, Weiss?" I taunt her from a distance, hoping that, as past has shown, anger might interrupt her level of ability. _Annoyance…frustration_, these words float to my mind, in a voice I don't recognize, before the girl huffs, pointing her free hand towards me. Instantly, a series of glyphs surround me, and I feel a strange sense of gravity changing direction. There's no escape. "Oh oh."

I yell in surprise as I'm suddenly launched forward, dropping my blade and tumbling toward the heiress as she crosses her rapier over her shoulder and steps a bit to the right. As I pass her in my uncontrolled spiral, she slashes the weapon down, cutting through my aura and dropping me into the red zone.

"Damnit," I mutter to the floor that my face is resting against, relaxing my hands that no longer hold any weapon anyway. I pull myself into a sitting position as Goodwitch calls the match.

"As you can see, all of Team BYRN is currently in the red, while team RWBY still has one safe member. In a tournament style fight, this is when a judge may call the match. Well fought, Mister Nakamura, if not incredibly risky," the professor nods at me before turning and walking away.

"She's right, you know," Weiss' voice comes from behind me. I snap my head up to find her extending her hand down towards me. I take it, pulling myself to my feet. "You fought well. While I don't appreciate the idea, detonating my weapon's entire dust chamber to relieve pressure on yourself was a good strategy."

"Thanks. Sorry about that, by the way. Hope it's fixable," I gesture to the discarded cylinder at the edge of the arena. Everyone else in the arena slowly finds their way to their feet, and we all part ways after a round of handshakes and kind remarks.

A/N Ember has a robot arm lol. I'll explain that maybe. From here is where I'll try to start the BYRN story, taking advantage of the unspecified time between the Forever Fall stuff and the last two chapters of RWBY's season 1.

Goals:

Backstories! I have them, but I don't know how to write them/incorporate them yet

Kevin's weapon! I have the idea, but deciding when to actually give him the thing

Kevin's semblance: Is sort of integral to what I have planned for during/post season 2. Again, when to give it to him

Actually get to mid-end deviations from canon (AKA the original part of this story. That during/post season 2 part): To be continued…


	10. Chapter 10

A/N Fuck it. Semblance now. Or at least starting. Watch Kevin actually win a match for once (although presumably he's just below-average in terms of Win/loss. Never addressed it because I DON'T WRITE PROGRESSION FOR THE STORY DOWN AND END UP WINGING IT LIKE A SCRUB)

/

"Russell Thrush and Kevin Nakamura to the center stage, please," Professor Goodwitch announces.

"Fun, I get to pick at CRDL again," I push myself to my feet, picking up the shield from where it lays at my feet and travelling down the steps before hopping onto the stage. Just my luck that it's the one in the middle, where anyone can watch.

"Damn Eastern trash," Russell narrows his eyes at me, smirking as he takes his stance.

"What did you just say?" I call from the other side of the arena.

"I said you're trash. You should just go back to Vacuo you weaponless scum." _Anger…jealousy…resentment…fear._ That voice again: The same one from when I fought Weiss during the team scrimmage. It growls into my ear these words on repeat. My body straightens on its own, feeling anger bristle down my spine. The professor asks of both of us are ready. I give a crisp nod in her direction while flourishing my blade.

"Ready to be kicked into the dust, Eastern trash?" Russell's twin knives appear in his hand as the yellow traffic light clicks on.

"Enough of your shit," I look up from the ground, hardening my gaze on his own. My face is impassive, except for the slightest curling up at the edge of my lip. _Fury_, the growling voice hums against my ear. The green light shines, followed by a buzzer. The next thing I know, power overtakes me, my usually partially-unsure stance replaced with strength and stability. I notice a rumbling rising in my throat as I flick the shield off of my arm, grabbing its edge into my hand before raising it and slamming it into the ground behind me. There's no clattering sound. It impaled itself in the tile.

"Ooh, are you angry, you useless stick?" I snap my head up, from the shield to the Mohawk boy. That smirk on my opponent's face grows wider, only fueling this uncharacteristic anger wracking my body.

"You're one to talk," my eyes widen in a maniacal manner as I raise my chin high, my head lopping sideways as I flick my blade, holding it sideways and pointed straight at my opponent. "I hope you have all your affairs in order, because they're going to have to wipe you from the walls."

"All bark and no bite," Mohawk boy charges at me. With only my sword now, I meet him halfway, attacking with a strange level of force and lack of restraint. I even use my flips at short range in order to gain momentum for my kicks, despite the risk of such a thing. I slash my blade across his chest in a moment of vulnerability, knocking one knife from his hand before lunging forward with my elbow to his face, taking a step back and swinging my fist around to backhand his head. A quick word of protest manages to pass the boy's lips before my foot makes contact with his side at an angle, sending him flying up and sideways. As he bounces off of the invisible arena barrier, I thrust my left hand down, digging the sword's tip into the arena's tiles. I reach with the same hand at the rebounding body, pushing more energy into him as I take a knee, slamming him face down into the ground. Seamlessly, I get back to my feet, pulling my sword from the tile and flourishing it up and above my hand in a reverse grip before plunging it into his vulnerable back before he can recover and get back up.

In my peripheral vision, I keep track of his aura, forcing my sword deeper against his back and twisting the handle a little bit. I hold the position for around ten seconds before the aura gauge in my vision changes from orange to red.

"That's the match," Goodwitch signals. At this, I rip my sword from my opponent's defensive aura, letting the blade fall from my grasp as a strange sense of weakness floods my system. "Mister Nakamura, please be more conservative of your aura. Your next match might not be so gracious." At this, she gestures to the board behind her, where it shows Russell's red aura gauge as well as my dark orange one.

_Did I really use that much aura in three minutes?_ I look between the board and the sword clattered against the ground.

"I didn't even realize that I was…using…" the weakness flares across my body, my eyes rolling up into my head. My legs buckle and give out under me as my vision blurs and blackens. I can just barely make out Aruna's voice, shouting for me, before someone's arm wrap around my shoulders from behind and bring me gently to the floor. Familiar long dark hair fills my vision.

/

I wake up in an uncomfortably thin and scratchy bed, white sheets draping over my lower half. As I look around, the monotonous beeping of a heart monitor continues. I'm in a hospital. Damn, I hate hospitals. Amongst all the white walls and furnishings, I notice a sea of black hair resting against the open area of the mattress beside me: Jade, sleeping and sitting in one of those really uncomfortable-looking metal chairs.

"Jade?" I poke the back of her head. She slowly stirs, pulling her head up as her brown eyes slowly come to focus on me.

"Mmm…Kevin? Oh gods, Kevin! You're awake," my partner springs up from her chair, hand immediately snapping out to clasp my own while her eyes suddenly well up with worry. "Are you feeling okay?"

"A bit of a headache, but it's no biggie. What happened? Why am I in a hospital?"

"You…passed out after your match-slash-massacre against Russell. He said some mean things, so he deserved it, but…you didn't seem like yourself up there."

"What did I do?" I look at her as she slowly descends back into her chair.

"You threw your shield into the floor. And I mean that thing got wedged into the floor and we needed Yang to rip it out." I can't help but laugh at this. Jade waits for me to stop before continuing. "You also used your aura constantly to pummel Russell to the ground. You stuck your sword in his back and left it there. You were also…growling…the whole time."

"Yeah, doesn't really sound like me. What do you think happened?"

"I think you snapped, for whatever reason. I mean, his team tormented Velvet for a long time before you stepped in, and he started saying all those things…I don't know."

"You know, you're a lot more talkative one-on-one," I take my free hand and reach over to poke her in the forehead. She retreats a little bit and shakes her head, the short tinkling of bells passing from her lips as she smiles.

"Well, I don't really have to worry about you judging me, right? We're partners."

"Right. Where's everyone else, by the way?"

"The hospital's a bit packed this week, so they restricted visitors. Partner priviliges. Plus, I was the one who caught you before you hit the floor, and brought you here in the first place."

"Ah." At this point I wonder if I should tell her about the growling voice. I mean, she cares enough to stick around to the point of passing out in order to look after me. To an extent, she deserves to know. Then again, the voice isn't saying anything crazy like "Go murder your entire team in the night" or something. It's only whispering dark emotions. Fear, resentment, jealously, anger, fury, etc. It seems strange to me, but maybe answers will come on their own. I let myself relax, my head hitting the pillow behind me as Jade rubs her thumb over my still-captive hand and starts telling me random stories from her past and what happened after I passed out.

A/N Russell probably was made out to be a little too harsh/unrealistic, but putting in the time to make a buildup to the point where the narrator would snap seemed like too much work and integration. Kevin's semblance is starting to come out, and I'd imagine that semblances are things that slowly progress as time spent with aura goes on. The voice will be explained once the full semblance appears.


	11. Chapter 11

"Hey, Kevin, you ever notice that some of the other guys glare at you when we're all together?" Ember observes randomly.

"Figures," I shrug. "One guy on a team of otherwise all girls? They're all probably jealous." We're all taking a walk around the Beacon campus during our free period. Jade's on my left while the others are on my right.

"Why would they be jealous?" Jade glances up at me.

"Because most guys are thirsty animals," Aruna answers for me. "Kevin here is just a regular animal."

"Thanks, Aruna," I deadpan at her. "But it does explain the flak I keep getting by most of the guys in our class. Jaune and Ren are two of the few who don't seem the care, but they're in the same situation, so…"

"But besides that: How are you feeling?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, it's been a week since your…episode."

"We're just wondering if you're feeling better. You've been a bit out of it since then," Ember explains. _Fear…worry. _I shake my head to try and push the voice further away.

"I'm fine, I guess. It's just that," I trail off for a second as the voice whispers _Jealousy_ at the same time one guy passes by me with a glare. "It's just a little headache. I'm sure that it'll go away in time." The voice hasn't really let up at all in the past week, although it's stronger during combat. The most I've been able to gather is that it tells me the negative emotions that people around me are feeling at the moment. Whatever purpose it serves is unknown.

"I hope so. We can't have you draining your own aura and passing out in the middle of combat," Aruna sighs.

"Well, you have to admit it was probably very entertaining."

"It was…minus the total bloodthirst and growling," Ember shrugs.

/

"I _hate_ paperwork," I sigh, sliding away from the desk, scattered with all the forge permissions papers. _Frustration…_ "Shut up." Muttering absently, I pack all of the papers in order again and set up the work necessary for the Grimm Studies essay due in a few days. The sound of a sliding door makes me turn around, seeing Jade in her grey tank top and athletic shorts, yawning.

"You're still up, Kevin?"

"Schoolwork. It's _fun_," I reply sarcastically, letting my head fall and rest against the desktop.

"Looks like you're still working on those forge permissions," she walks over, laying a finger on top of the large stack.

"It's so much work. I don't have a weapon design in mind, anyway. It sucks."

"You know, I could always build you a weapon, myself. My forge permissions transferred over from my old school, so I can go in there whenever," she pulls up a chair next to me.

"No, I wouldn't want to put that kind of burden on you," I look over to my partner.

"It's no burden. I want to," she smiles, gingerly resting a hand on my shoulder.

"Well, I guess it's fine."

"Yeah. So, what do you want for your weapon?"

"Jade, you know me pretty well. I think if it's made by you, then I'll love whatever you come up with."

"W-well," she retracts her hand back to her lap and glances down at the floor, a smile creeping on her lips. "I g-guess I'll get right to it, then. Tomorrow."

"Yeah," I lean back in my chair.

"Well," Jade stands up and yawns again, stretching her arms above her head, "I'm gonna go back to bed. You should, too. The essay will be there in the morning."

"Right," I reach over and turn off the desk light before going to my own section of the room.

/

Over the next week, Jade keeps disappearing to the forge to work on my weapon. When she finally unveils her work, she drags me back to the room immediately after class.

"I finished your weapon," she grins as she produces a black case from under her desk. "Well, weapons."

"Plural?" I rest against the same desk.

"You seem to enjoy using a shield, and you're actually really good with a gun after Ember's training, so I thought it'd be a good idea to give you both. I-I hope you like them." She points the open end of the case towards me and opens it, revealing a folded up gun inside. Inside the lid is a gauntlet, clearly the shield. The gun seems simple enough, set up like a long rifle with the barrel shrunken up and the stock folded around. The shield is circular, and segmented so that it folds up in a rotating pattern. The base of rotation is right at the wrist.

"The gun has a bayonet in the front, and the shield has an engine so that it can be used as a buzzsaw."Jade seems really proud as she presents it to me.

"They look amazing," I pick up the black, purple, and dark metal-grey rifle, clicking a small lever on the side of the handle. The stock flips out from under the body of the rifle, swiveling around the bottom of the handle. The barrel extends along its shaft, and the aforementioned bayonet extends from right under the barrel, an 18 inch silver blade of stabbing glory. From the looks of the chamber section of the rifle, it's a semi-automatic weapon that fires similar rounds to Ember's heavy pistol. The compactness of the weapon makes it easy for me to grip the barrel section with my opposite hand for stock-strikes and stability. It's almost like a (half) blunt sword, thanks to the angle of the handle.

"The shield," Jade puts the box down and pulls out the gauntlet before fastening it to my right forearm. She grabs my fingers and forces me to flick my wrist, making a small handle flip up from the underside of the gauntlet and into my palm. "This button on top of the handle deploys the shield, and this trigger makes it spin."

Taking her information, I click the top of the button, which reminds me of an aviation control handle, and the segments of the shield on my forearm spin out from a single plate into a circular pattern. The thick set of plates collapses down so that its stair-cased setup turns into a seamless shield. It's the same sort of collapsing pins that Jade's blades and the rifle's bayonet use. I pull the trigger, watching the shield, which extends from just past my elbow to just over my outstretched fingers, spin like a buzzsaw, making the sound of a power drill.

"Amazing, Jade. They're both amazing," I click the top button of the shield and click the side lever of the rifle again, watching both of them collapse. I put the rifle on the desk, taking two steps over to Jade and wrapping her into an embrace.

"Wah—So you really like them?" Jade's own arms come together behind my back. I lean back in order to put my hands on her shoulders reassuringly.

"Yep. I told you, I'll love anything you can make."

"Thanks," she rests her forehead against my shoulder. "I'm really tired, now." I chuckle at this, knowing that she'd been working hard all week on this project. The door to our dorm opens, and both of us gently shove each other away in an attempt to save ourselves from any embarrassment from our teammates.


	12. Chapter 12

I rest my chin in my palm as I eat my lunch using my other hand. The girls—being my team and Velvet—are talking amicably among themselves, with Jade and I on one side and the other three on the other. Ember seems fully engrossed in the conversation…something about Velvet's fighting style, from the sound of it. The four seem very content in the current situation, making idle chat about whatever comes to mind, while in my own head, random sparks of a certain ominous voice sporadically strike at the mental barriers I'd formed.

I'm broken out of my trance of passively listening to the girls' conversation when I notice silence encompass the table. My eyes flit up from my plate to the four of them, noticing them looking over my shoulder. Raising my eyebrow, I raise my head from its place on my palm and turn to meet whatever they're staring at. I'm met with a brown and black-clad woman, with a beret on her head and a long curly lock of highlighted hair coming down to frame her face. Sunglasses block my view of her eyes, but I can tell she's looking at me.

"Oh…hello," I lean towards the table in an attempt to put more space between me and the new figure. She seems to be a second-year, based on her confident stance and the fact that I haven't seen this person ever during classes before.

"Coco, what are you doing here?" Velvet speaks up, clearly taking the surprise with a hint of warmth and curiosity.

"Just checking out the scene. You haven't joined us in the library the last few weeks. I was wondering why," the woman, identified as Coco, answers.

"Oh, I…I made some new friends. We've been talking," the faunus answers awkwardly.

"Hmm," Coco glances over my team, resting on me for an extra second. I'd be lying if I didn't say that at least a small amount of adrenaline started sending chills through my blood. "Interesting, a bunch of first-years? Are these the same ones that stopped that asshole Winchester?"

"Well, really only Kevin, but yeah," Velvet admits, poking at her food. _Thanks for putting me on the spot, Velv_, I grimace at being called out in any form. The dark voice tries to whisper my own emotions at me, but is cut off by the beret-wearing girl.

"Well, I guess I should thank you all, then," she puts her hand on my shoulder. "I was just about ready to sock the kid, myself."

"No big deal. We've always been the type to stand up for the discriminated. Right, Fireball?" I direct my gaze at my team leader.

"Yeah yeah," she waves it off before looking back to Coco. "My name's Aruna. Bromwell."

"Ember Rosemary," the resident blonde sticks a peace sign out to the second-year while giving a large grin.

"J-Jade Yamihari," my partner follows suit.

"I'm Kevin Nakamura," I give a mock salute, tapping my index and middle fingers to my forehead. "We're team BYRN."

"Coco Adel. Velvet and I are on team CVFY, second-year. I wish you all the best of luck," she waves goodbye to all of us and starts walking to the exit.

"Your friend seems nice," Aruna returns to her meal.

"She's my team leader. She's a bit aloof when it comes to new people. I'd expect you all to end up on a mission sometime soon," Velvet informs us.

"Why would we go on a mission? We're only first-years," I counter.

"Coco has power enough to get it approved. Nothing more than a simple grimm extermination, I'm sure."

"Great, maybe I'll get to field test Noctus and Sivir," I refer to my weapons, having only faced off against Ember with them so far.

/

Strangely enough, we did end up approved for a mission, with a one week's notice. Like Velvet said: a simple grimm extermination to the west. Right now, however, I'm facing off against Cardin in combat class. For some reason, the slightest wisps of black smoke seem to be surrounding him, floating up around his shoulders.

_Jealousy_, the voice whispers in my ear. _Anger_. I shake the thoughts from my head as the lights flash from red to green.

_Fear_, the voice throws in one more emotion as the sound of fire erupts from the adjacent arena. Yang Xiao Long going berserk again, probably, and the emotion gleaned probably is coming from her opponent. I roll my eyes as I slide Noctus from my leg, clicking the lever to draw it to its full stature before stabilizing the weapon with my opposite hand and firing at the charging mammoth known as Cardin Winchester. He blocks the first three bullets before he's in strike range of using his mace.

Without a thought, I raise my right hand, flicking the lever into my hand and deploying the shield. Its spinning nature diverts Cardin's strike slightly to the side, but he takes no time in whirling around and—with his back turned to me—elbowing me in the face.

_Anger_, the voice taunts as I fall backwards onto my rear. As Cardin takes a back swing with his weapon, I compact my weapons and roll to the side, flipping over a low strike that sends sparks flying as it scrapes along the ground. As I back up, I pepper his aura with a few more shots from Noctus. This time, as he's in strike range, I whirl around, pushing momentum into a right hook from Sivir. The sharp edges of the circular shield slice against his aura before the back end of his mace collides with my head.

_Pain_, the voice echoes. I shake my head free of its newfound migraine and shoot Cardin in the foot a few times. I swing my shield up to block a downward strike before hopping back and firing another few rounds. Cardin charges, doing a barrel jump in order to push power into a downward slam. I notice the red gem in the center of his mace glowing, alerting me to its explosive properties being used. I jump and twist over the resulting shockwave, fear running through my body. I swing my shield so that it faces behind me while I point my rifle forward, using my old sword-and-shield stance from before.

To my surprise, a shadowy version of Sivir arcs towards Cardin, as if launched from my arm. Cardin knocks the apparition to the side, the shadow thing disappearing in a wisp of smoke upon impact. I can feel the silence coming from the spectator stands at this new development. My headache from being bopped on the head returns, and as I stagger and look down, I see the same shadowy wisps that surround Cardin surrounding my arm. The pain strikes through my head again, although it feels almost internal. Strange flashes of memory cut across my mind, from a child's perspective. They're twisted in strange isolation and sadness, and my vision throbs in waves of black before everything recedes into the back of my mind.

"Shadows, huh?" I strap Noctus to my leg and point Sivir forward like an arm-mounted cannon. To my surprise, the shadows surrounding Cardin flow to the floor, snaking across it before reaching my feet and travelling up to surround my arms. More black smoke surrounds my shield before I send out the notion of launching more shadow discs at Cardin, who seems to have shaken off the shock of the new element, holding his mace in a way so that the head of the weapon is facing me, the red crystal pointed forward like his own cannon.

"I forgot his mace could do that," I mutter, triggering the spinning function of Sivir as the multiple blades that make up Cardin's mace's head start to do the same. "Fire in the hole." The shadows condense around Sivir's normally-bronze form before launching apparitions towards Cardin. Each shot is met with a burst of concentrated fire, and a small explosion of red and black results. Seeing no change in the situation, I keep Sivir pointed at Cardin and firing as I get up and strafe to the side, drawing Noctus again and letting the last few bullets loose. As I draw more smoke from Cardin, the haze surrounding him disappears, leaving him as clear as before the smoke started appearing. With Noctus emptied of projectiles, I take my finger off of the trigger, gripping the rifle in a more sword-friendly fashion before charging in.

Cardin starts to fire with more speed, forcing me to initiate a series of flips in order to avoid getting lasered. As I come in range, pulling my rifle back in preparation for a stabbing strike, Cardin's mace returns to its standard form as he swings it behind him and back up, knocking me out of the air and transferring some more shadow from himself to me. Those strange not-my memories strike at me again: I can tell that they're not my own, because they feel like they belonged to someone else.

_The anguished memories of the Winchester_, the voice offers as my mind cycles through a series of mental images. I piece everything together as I hold my shield up, the shadows as well as my aura flaring in order to block a ramming attack from Cardin.

"You don't actually hate the faunus, do you, Cardin?" I let my arms fall to my sides—not in defeat, but in a strange sense of comfort. That same sense of my body being in control of itself fills me up as Cardin's face warps into a mix of confusion and dread. Flashes of mental images, his memories: Faunus and human children playing on a playground together. The faunus could jump higher, run faster, see in a dark, and so many other neat tricks. Poor Cardin was left in the dust in comparison. Playing manhunt, and always being the first one out because of his lack of nocturnal perception.

"You envied them, truly, in those formative first years," I walk up to him, deploying Noctus into my hand and swinging it to the side. "They were better than you in every way."

"You don't know what you're talking about," the large man broods, stepping back and letting the top of his mace open up again and hailing fire at me. I hold my shield up, letting shadows—which are becoming denser as my speech draws deep-rooted memories from lingering in the back of his mind into corrupting the forefront of it—take the hit. My aura drops considerably less than if I relied only on it to defend myself.

"Oh, I think I do. When you were, probably eight, social status became a thing. For all your shortcomings, Winchester, you were better than the faunus by definition. You abused that sudden change, taking it out on the same faunus that you perceived to have been attacking you. They weren't showing off, boy. They were only having fun," I swing my shield and knock his mace to the side. It slams its head into the floor, lodging itself there. "Do you feel more powerful, Winchester? Even now, so many years later, despite your attempts to put them down: They. Are. Better. Than. You."

Cardin charges at me with is bare hands, rage consuming him. As his fist bears down on me, I lunge forward, dodging the jab. I swing my shield sideways so that I can take advantage of its cutting edge, slicing across his aura before stabbing my rifle into his stomach. Wordlessly, I spin again and swipe the bayonet against his face, sending him into the red zone.

"A hunter doesn't deal in revenge, Winchester. They seek peace over unrequited and unsanctioned violence." With that statement, the strange force that filled my body disappears, leaving me feeling unprotected and weakened. The professor calls the match as Cardin drops to his knees and I walk off the stage. More black smoke surrounds the man, but I find myself unable to collect it to me.

"Looks like you finally found your semblance, Kevin," Aruna grabs my wrist and pulls me into a hug the second I near the benches. "Wicked cool, by the way."

"T-thanks, Aruna. Can't say I understand it at all, though," I return the embrace.

"It'll come in time. Remember when I burned the chemistry lab down because I didn't understand my own semblance at the time? Things get better," she smiles, leaning back so that she can look me in the eye. She pats my shoulder twice before sitting back down. I shrug, aware that my team will help me out as time goes on.

A/N So, that's Kevin's semblance in a nutshell. All will be explained regarding it in time. At this point, it's relevant to say that the fight-crazy version of Kevin (and the whispery voice in his head) from the Russell fight is a byproduct of his semblance, the side that takes on the memories from the shadows. Kevin's semblance is Dissociative Personality Disorder (but not really) :P


	13. Chapter 13

"Kevin, are you okay?" Jade pulls me to my feet. We'd just finished another session of poking at my semblance's nature and abilities. Unfortunately, using the shadows surrounding Jade produced the side effect of seeing flashes of the memories and thoughts that triggered them. Over the past few days, we've been working vigorously with my semblance, considering the sudden development appearing right before our grimm extermination assignment.

What we've found so far is marked on a small whiteboard that Aruna hung over my desk:

"Kevin's semblance makes him see shadows surrounding some people"

"Some voice whispers people's emotional states to him if they're negative:

-"These states need to be on their minds at the moment"

"Kevin can draw these shadows to himself and manipulate them to his will. Sometimes."

"Other people can only see the negative energy when Kevin is controlling it."

"Using other peoples' shadows causes him to see the triggering memories and thoughts behind the emotions."

"People with negative emotions are like a source for him. Sources can be drained if used faster than replenished."

"This does not rid the person of the emotion."

"Shadows act like a more versatile aura, although the source is separate of the user."

"Using own shadows does not have memory-flash problems."

"Shadow vision is tied to semblance activation. The whisper voice is not."

The list doesn't contain any specifics to my range of abilities with the shadows/emotions at my command, as our progress needed to surround basic activation and use. After all, every attempt at using was met with at least five seconds of migraines before I could control a person's negative energy. That was a large impediment to our study of it.

"I'm fine. You know how it is by now," I take her extended hand to pull myself to my feet. Glancing up at the training arena's holographic data board, my aura only dropped at half of the rate expected of the time we've spent training. The negative energies, as we've discovered, make a pretty solid secondary shield that covers my aura. Besides the ability to condense and fire the shadow off, that comes in handy.

"You're definitely less sporadic in drawing on the negative energy," Aruna praises. "It's a strange semblance, but effective. We'll get to see how it fares against the grimm tomorrow."

"Yeah," I sigh, my muscles relaxing as I fold up Noctus, storing it on my hip after collapsing Sivir. "We still haven't got a name for the thing. I mean, Jade has 'Ethereal Phasing,' and you have control over fire—that doesn't really require a fancy name—But the control of the negative energies spawned by people's emotional states? A bit of a handful: Could use some shortening there."

"What about 'Shadow's Mirror?'" Ember speaks up from beside her partner. The rest of us turn and stare at her, eyebrows raised in question. The blonde takes a defensive stance, arms spread out and shoulders shrugged. "What? I've been thinking about it these past few days. It works, doesn't it? I mean you literally take people's darkness and throw it back at them."

"It really is a good representation of your semblance," Aruna concedes, casting me a sidelong glance.

"Well, that's great. It sounds cool, too!" I quip, stretching my arms behind my head. "It's getting late, huh? I still have that evil Great War project to do. I hate maps."

"I'll help you with it later," Aruna rolls her eyes, descending from the elevated arena and walking towards the exit. "Let's all get some rest, team. We have a big day ahead of us."

"We're gonna drink kool-aid from the skullplates of grimm tomorrow!" Ember declares, pumping her fist in the air as she follows her partner out.

"Glorious," I remark under my breath, rolling my eyes in jest at her enthusiasm. A smirk plays across Jade's lips beside me.

"Don't worry: We'll wash the bones before we use them for kitchenware," she hops down from the arena, her waist-length hair following her like a thousand black ribbons. I run my hand over the top of my head, spiking it back up before joining my team in the walk back to the dorm.

/

"Bang bang into the room!" Ember nods her head sideways in tune with whatever music is blaring in her headphones as Shredder peppers the wave of grimm with lead.

"We actually just came out of the room," Aruna shakes her head, her short bob of red hair matching the fire dancing across her tomahawks, which are currently linked together at the bottom of the handles to form a short staff with the axe heads facing opposite directions.

"It's a song lyric," Jade explains as she skids to a stop next to me. Wordlessly, I spin and throw my foot at the resident assassin, snapping my foreleg to pump force against her. Right on time, she reactivates her semblance and gets launched back at the grimm, enacting her own corkscrew with blades drawn to cut through the soulless shadows. We're standing just outside of the entrance to the village, Ember in the middle of us and firing wherever we're not, me on the right side and using Noctus when I can, bashing the heads of leaping beowolves with my shield as they draw near. Aruna can't use her fire at max capacity because of the forest surrounding the village, but she lets small bursts of her power loose against every beowolf or ursa she hits. Jade lets her semblance power her through the lines of grimm, disrupting them at every opportunity, before returning to my side as her timer runs out.

Jade's semblance can only be kept on for ten seconds at a time, apparently. Aruna and I, so far, have no real problems with length so much as requiring a starting source to use. Aruna's semblance has never been able to grant her the ability to create fire, but Ember's lighter/drill/robot hand makes up for that just fine, along with the lighter that our team leader carries with her at all times anyway.

We keep the grimm pushed out just fine, having been alerted to their presence before they reached the village gates in the first place. Jade returns to my side as her semblance timer runs out again, but there's only a few grimm left at this point anyway. The mission seems about over…until a deafening roar comes from the mountains in the distance, shaking the trees and instilling fear in the grimm themselves.

"Shit," I grit my teeth, sensing an approaching darkness through my semblance.


	14. Chapter 14

A/N Wait I have followers on this shitpiece? lol. Also I noticed that I forgot to put in the Kevin cursing and mumbling random sarcastic crap during fights. Assume that he's just doing it constantly?

/

"So, how'd the mission go?" Coco joins our team as we walk into the lunchroom.

"Well," I glance off to the side, quick flashes of paralyzing fear, screaming, and blood running through my mind. There are new scars covering my left forearm, remnants of claws tearing through it. "Great. Totally great."

"We got attacked by a Colossus Beowolf," Aruna shudders. "The thing was horribly vicious."

"I don't have half of my fingers!" Ember holds up her left hand, and, true to her word, her ring and pinkie finger are no longer attached to the rest of the robotic limb. The glove normally donned over the appendage is also missing. "We won, though."

"Well, I assumed so," Coco nervously responds. "Can't say I expected an A class grimm to attack that village."

"_Vastly_ more difficult than an alpha beowolf or even a deathstalker," Jade remarks.

"You survived, so kudos to you all. I approve," the second-year team leader turns on her heel to head to the library.

"'I approve,'" I mock to myself. "Really? That's it?"

"Good thing Kevin's semblance can use grimm as a source as well," Aruna grimaces as we get in the lunch line. "What did you see through your semblance, anyway?"

"I…let's just say that the Colossus still has some fear of humans…The other grimm turned tail and ran because they didn't want to mess with it. That monstrosity enjoys fighting, even against its own kind." I struggle to find a good description among the scattered and primal vestiges of the beowolf and Colossus memories that I'd experienced during the fight. The Colossus, at twenty feet tall, with four arms and segmented boneplates shielding its body, had a deafening roar and sharp rows of teeth, and its existence sort of scrambled my own mind as well. To our luck, our combined efforts were able to drive it away. Most grimm didn't have intelligence beyond primal fighting, running, and hunting, but that thing knew strategy. It must've been ancient, considering one of its fearful memories involved humans armed with only dust and spears. Remembering these flashes sends chills across my frame, but luckily no one seems to notice.

"Well, it's not our problem, now. Knowing that the Colossus is out there, they'll send in a real team to deal with it," Aruna shrugs.

"I'd hope so. As long as I never have to see another one again, I care not," Jade shakes her head as she takes her meal.

"Agreed," I let my semblance slip into my mind for a brief moment, watching the invisible apparitions of shadow envelope my teammates. The Colossus must've scared a lot into them, because there's a lot of shadow there.

/

"We needed this," Aruna sighs, sinking into her seat and shaking her head, the short spiky bob shimmering against the restaurant's light.

"Tell me about it," I interlock my fingers behind my head. "It's been a while since we've talked one-on-one."

"I feel bad about leaving our partners behind, though."

"Jade's studying for the maths test. You'd think that a grimm-killing blade machine wouldn't need to study something like that," I chuckle, resting my hands around my coffee cup.

"Well, she said she lived in the forest growing up. Not much math is required there," the redhead clicks her tongue as she scans over the menu. The mention of Jade's past sends flashes of the memories I'd gleaned from her with my semblance. I grimace slightly as I remember that I had yet to talk to her about it. Then again, I'm not much to talk about my own past, either. The most that Ember and Jade know is that I joined combat school two years late, at fifteen.

They don't know that I'd moved to that area of Vacuo after some…troubles, or that I'd been allowed to skip the first two years of the four-year primary combat training because I'd stopped an armed robbery single-handedly (They also don't know the reason I was even nearby in the middle of the night). When one thought about it, I was a lot like Ruby, only having two years of combat school experience and being moved up in the world through the chance of being near an armed robbery. The difference being that she stopped a high-end criminal while I stopped a bunch of desperate lower-class workers.

"I guess. And Ember?"

"Getting new fingers made. Surprisingly, she _had_ a spare set of parts for an entire left arm, but she'd forgotten it at home when coming to Beacon."

"Ah. I'm thinking of going for the supreme omelette. You?"

"Some fried eggs and pancakes. Get a tiramisu cake to share?"

"Too sweet for my tastes, you know that."

"More for me," the girl chuckles. "So, how are things with you and Jade?" Before I can even think of formulating an answer, I hear someone shouting in the street.

"Hey, stop that faunus!" whoever it is shouts. My head snaps to the large front window of the restaurant, with its short banner welcoming the people here for the Vytal festival. A monkey faunus seems to have flipped off of a lightpost before dashing from the docks and down the street, towards us. I stand up to get a better look, until I recognize the distinct greaves and medallion of someone I know from my pre-combat school days in Vacuo. Someone who'd moved from Vacuo to Mistral.

"Sun?" I pull a few lien from my pocket and drop it on the table to pay for the coffee before looking back at Aruna. "We can have breakfast later. Follow me."

"Oh boy," the girl slides out of her chair, tapping her weapon at her side as we jog out of the restaurant just in time to see Sun flash past us, flashing me a peace sign as he continues down the street.

"Yep, that's Sun," I give chase, joining the strange procession in the order of: Sun, me, Aruna, the two policemen (presumably having followed him from the docks), and…Team RWBY? In Aruna's and my more steadfast chase, Sun is unable to peel us from him as he rounds a corner. The policemen and team RWBY seem to have fallen off of the trail, due to the faunus' speed, my own use of my aura, and Aruna being an unfortunately very able person. She's good at everything. As we turn the corner, all three of us accidentally run into a girl with shoulder-length ginger hair, wearing a green dress, black slacks, and having a bow on her head. She falls right over, landing like a plank on the sidewalk.

"Sorry!" we all exclaim by default as the chase continues, Sun obviously being thorough in putting distance between himself and the authorities. Sun leads us into another turn before disappearing into an alley, stopping himself and turning around. I pull myself to a stop and glance at his mischievous grin.

"I knew it had to be you, Kevin!" Sun exclaims, pulling me into a bear hug. "You're the only human insane enough to try and keep up with a faunus on the run!"

"Yeah…hi, Sun," I grimace as air disappears from my lungs. The blonde puts me down and glances at Aruna behind me.

"So, who's the lady?" he gestures to the redhead.

"I'm Aruna. Kevin never mentioned you before. Are you two friends?" she immediately begins her line of questioning.

"Yeah. We knew each other back in middle school! I moved to Mistral when we were twelve so that I could apply to their combat school with the residency bonus. I never expected that I'd meet him again in Vale of all places."

"I…ended up going to Beacon," I scratch the back of my head.

"Dude, nice!" he holds up his fist, which I bump with my own. "So, the girl?"

"Oh, yeah! Aruna helped me out a lot when I ended up in combat school. I joined two years late by some twist of fate," I explain.

"Cool cool. You can tell that I might've shown up for the Vytal festival a bit early," he hops from the ground onto the nearby dumpster. "I can expect to see you in the competition, right?"

"Right," I drag out the word and grimace.

"Alright. Later, bud!" he deftly leaps upwards, grabbing onto the ledge of the roof and swinging up.

"Come on, Aruna, let's go," I roll my eyes and exit the alley. "You want those pancakes?"

"Yes!" Aruna pumps her fist, bringing it down in front of her before catching herself, a blush evident on her face.

"Looks like Ember's rubbing off on you," I chuckle.

"Shut it," she pouts, running up and flicking my forehead.


	15. Chapter 15

"Wow, so this is Vale during the Vytal Festival?" Jade takes in the scenery surrounding us. Surprisingly, she's not wearing her usual high-collared sleeveless shirt, instead wearing a pink shirt that hangs just off of her shoulders, with large three-quarter sleeves, and with a tank top underneath. Her hair is tied back loosely with a red ribbon, and her dark-grey leggings have a red stripe down the outside sides. I as well had opted for some variation, with a short-sleeved henley shirt and khaki shorts instead of my usual jeans and dress shirt, my combat boots swapped out for regular converse.

"It's a multinational event, of course," I glance around at the decorations on the street and in the shops. "In just a few months, the festival will start, and we get to compete in the tournament."

"Of course, you'll get your asses kicked by yours truly," Sun appears on my opposite side, hands casually clasped behind his head.

"There you are, Sun," I roll my eyes. "I was wondering when you would show up."

"Yeah, yeah. So, you're with a different girl this time," he observes, looking at Jade, who raises an eyebrow at this.

"Oh, yeah. This is Jade. She's another member of my team at Beacon," I explain. She waves timidly to the blonde.

"Oh? And here I thought you'd just finally given in to being a ladies' man," he teases.

"Well, except for me, my team is made of ladies."

"Ooh, that must be rough, huh?"

"Go back to Mistral and look at your own team's room. I bet it's a total mess, right?"

"Well, I…," Sun trails off, clearly unable to think of a response or counter.

"Living with three women means that the room is clean—I mean Ember only ever makes a mess on the battlefield—and smells surprisingly nice. Plus, they're all friendly enough," I wrap my arm around Jade's shoulder, glancing down accusingly, "Although some take more than others to start having real conversations."

"Sounds familiar," Sun chuckles as I release my partner. "So, where's the rest of your team?"

"T-they should be here soon," Jade answers.

"So she does talk! Man, you and Blake have a lot in common in that regard," Sun observes. I don't bother mentioning that one doesn't need to socialize and talk that much in order to be a master assassin. "Who's the fourth member of your little gang here at Beacon?"

"Ember. A crazy girl with a crazy robot arm that shoots fire," I shrug. "She likes music."

"So, your psycho cyborg, an overprotective redhead, and the shy one over here," Sun generalizes my team. "Plus the violent sociopath known as Kevin Nakamura."

"Wow, thanks," I roll my eyes, driving my fist into his shoulder. Jade, on the other hand, lets loose the faint melody of her laugh, stifling it behind her hand when she notices my gaze.

"Oh, t-there they are!" Jade points to the two of them down the street. I crane my neck to be able to see Ember's wild and haphazard blonde mane among the crowd. Considering her height, it's not that hard to find. She catches my eyes, waving happily before rushing over to greet us, dragging Aruna behind her.

"Ooh, who's your faunus friend?" Ember cocks her head to the side once our basic greetings are over.

"I'm Sun. I'm here for the Vytal Festival. From Mistral," he puts his hands on his hips and flashes his signature grin.

"Cool! I thought people wouldn't be arriving until after winter break!" she throws her own wild smile, raising her hands to the side for emphasis.

"Well, I'm early…for reasons."

"He stowed away on a ship so that he could secure the best guest dorm for his team," I deadpan and explain his presence.

"Basically," he admits before leaning in to my ear. "Dude, your team is _hot_."

"Aruna can literally light your tail on fire from a distance, Ember has a flame-spitting robot hand, and Jade's a master assassin. I'd watch it, bro," I warn, whispering back. Aruna raises her eyebrow at our private conversation.

"So," Sun draws himself back, swinging his arms awkwardly, "What now?"

"Arcade?" Ember suggests, adjusting her biker goggles. At this, I notice that Ember's actually wearing a frilled blue sundress and a long-sleeved sweater instead of her biking pants and leather jacket. Everyone's loosened up now that winter break is only a few days away, I suppose, except that Aruna's always favored wearing civilian clothing outside of the combat setting.

"Ooh, I'm gonna totally destroy you in Smash Bros!" Sun slams his fist into his palm jokingly.

"Oh, we're actually going to play a different game, first," Aruna forebodes.

"Yeah? I'm still gonna win."

/

"I can't believe I totally lost," Sun sighs as he walks beside my team.

"They did the same thing to me the first time we hung out," I put my hand on his shoulder consolingly.

"Rock on! I beat you while wearing a _dress_, monkey-boy!" Ember laughs.

"Whatever," Sun waves it off with a smile, his golden aura appearing briefly around him simply from the pure joy he's experiencing. In contrast, my own purple aura glows around my legs as I preemptively let some of it flow into my muscles.

"If you want a game against these three that you can actually win, might I recommend a race?" I glance at the group.

"Loser makes us pancakes for a week!" Aruna announces before using my same aura trick to propel herself forward using her red aura. I launch forward with astounding speed in order to catch up to her.

"Cheater!" I shout as I jump up, leaping off of a building wall and grabbing the corner post in order to swing myself around to the right.

"I have the strongest aura out of all of you," Ember reminds us, her medium grey aura flooding her legs as she starts to catch up. Sometimes I regret having taught them all the tricks I'd learned with my aura. Jade's faint light-red ethereal form appears beside me briefly before disappearing into another building. Sun's on the rooftops, jumping and flipping from building to building to keep up. Once we leave the city, Jade runs right up the hill, able to ignore the tres, while the rest of us take to swinging up the trees towards the school. Then we hit the cliffs.

Jade, once again, seems to just phase through the rock, so I can't really track her at all. Every few seconds, she reappears out of the side of the cliff, wrapping her fingers around a handhold before swinging back into the rock. Ember's using the drill form of her robot hand to swing herself up, while Aruna is doing something similar with her tomahawks (which she'd kept strapped to her back with a different holster than usual). Sun and I have similar ideas on using our previous experience with rock climbing and our current skill with aura in order to propel ourselves up the cliff. My semblance can only form a defensive armor and shroud around me, or mimic simple objects, so it's useless in this scenario.

We finally scale the cliff before bolting to the Beacon center fountain, something we'd used as a rendezvous multiple times in the past. Well, us and every other student in Beacon. Jade deactivates her semblance and lands in the bench near the side, clearly still winded like the rest of us. Aruna skids to a stop, followed by Ember, then Sun. I dejectedly slow my pace to a jog to avoid getting flung by pure momentum into the fountain.

"Aw, Kevin's gonna make us pancakes for breakfast for the rest of the semester!" Aruna chuckles, crossing her legs in front of her.

"Yeah, yeah," I huff, catching my breath. "We have our last day of combat class tomorrow, so we should probably rest up."

"Yeah," Ember agrees, "That was _such_ a workout…I can't feel my legs."

"I can't feel much of anything at the moment," I reply.

"I agree with that sentiment," Jade, who is splayed out on the floor, raises her hand in the air momentarily. As we slowly collect ourselves from the ground, I find myself having to half-drag Jade to the dorm. She's collapsed on my arm, eyes drooping, until we enter the room. Then she seems able to drag herself into the girls' partition as everyone settles down for the night.

"Good night, girls," I raise my voice just enough to be heard.

"Good night!" each one of my teammates responds in turn.


	16. Chapter 16

A/N to an extent I have realized that Kevin's semblance is kind of (or very) OP, even with the idea of restricting the use of shadows by making them related to negative emotions. Starting chapter 21ish I will _try_ to make it seem less powerful by changing the "seeing the triggering memories" into just feeling pain/anger or somewhere in between throughout the duration of the use. After 21 the memory gimmick will have served its initial purpose. (The pain/anger will be a high initial burst before lowering, increasing as time does thereafter. Like a _f_ hit, returning to a _mp_ for a beat, then crescendoing over time back to _f_ (MUSIC!).

The justification for this pain sensation will be that channeling Kevin's own negative emotions allows him to control the generated shadows in more force. Negative emotions will also be reduced to malice (fury falls into this category, in my mind)/pain/anger (frustration included)/fear/jealousy (contempt included) (hopefully I remember this) in order to nerf the semblance even more. And higher/more intense emotions=more power for the semblance. In terms of how Kevin's semblance appears, just imagine a thin veil of shadow around a person (like fog), that swept up towards him in a wind-like way. This chapter is technically filler, but hopefully the introduction of a thing will make it a bit interesting.

Kevin's weapon design: art/Noctus-and-Sivir-532856451

Ember drawing: art/Ember-532857151

/

"Hey, um…Kevin, was it?" a voice distracts me before I can swipe my scroll over the lock to my dorm. The Voice seems to be buzzing around in my head, trying to say something, although I'm not sure what. As I turn, I realize that I have to look up a bit in order to meet the eyes of a chestnut-haired man in a suit of armor. Cardin.

"What do you want?" I curl my lip and take a step back, facing the man more squarely. With him in my view, the voice seems to have made a conscious decision on its choice of word: Fear. _Fear? From this guy?_ True to the Voice's statement, there is a slight veil of black smoke surrounding his shoulders and head. I make the decision to not automatically get ready to try and fight him, especially in the middle of a hallway in the late night.

"You said that 'a hunter doesn't deal in revenge, that they seek peace,'" he begins, rubbing one hand over the other after his paraphrasing of my words to him. "Do you really believe that?"

"Well I said it, did I not?" I tilt my head, a moment of confusion washing over me as to whether or not they were my words, or the Voice's words. "Why? That was quite a while ago."

"Well…I've been trying to take it to heart. After the incident with the ursa major in Forever Fall, I'd been considering it, but now I'm sure that it's the right choice," Cardin removes himself from his slumped position to standing straight, conviction evident in his eyes. "I want to change. It's been…hard, though."

"I don't see any of your previous victims taking your word for it…or anyone else really feeling trusting of you," I click my tongue, leaning against the wall. "Do your teammates have the same idea?"

"Dove isn't like us, so he's no problem. He's on my side in the matter. Russell and Sky, however? Not so much," he sighs. The Voice buzzes around in my head for another second before Cardin's azure eyes look back to me. "You never said if you were going to help me or not."

"I didn't know that the offer was on the table," I shrug. "Know that I refuse to help you until you convince your team as a whole to take the reforms. I refuse to real with your internal politics interfering with our progress."

"I-I will try. Any um…ideas on how to get about doing that?"

"I could always sic Jade, Yatsuhashi, Ren, and Nora on them. That'd at least get the inter-human racism covered. Maybe it will let them see the errors of their ways," I joke, looking up as I imagine the scene.

"I don't think that'd work."

"I know. It's a nice image, though. Look, they just have to be taken down a peg, realize that their actions have consequences. Once your team is at least committed to trying, you call me," I hold up my scroll for emphasis before swiping it against the dorm lock. The green light flashes briefly before I open the door.

"I was serious when I said that no one really trusts you," I sigh, putting one foot in the room before catching the larger man's eye one more time. "My semblance is one of the only reasons I haven't decided to kick you in your face." I slip into my dorm, closing the door, before going into my section of the room and passing out.

/

I awake suddenly, my body lurching up and forward and my eyes wide as I grip the bedsheets. _Stupid memories_, I grumble mentally as I check the clock on my nightstand. It's only 4:00, I have two more hours. I collapse into the mattress, pulling the mess of covers up and around my curled body in the corner of the room/bed. The memory of me snapping for the first time—like _really_ snapping, not just a heated word or threat, had surfaced in my dreams. When I was about thirteen, I'd destroyed one of the people who bullied me by pounding his face in and slamming his head against a locker repeatedly. It was the same strange override of power and fury that Russell had managed to dig up from within me. I blame my previous talk with the (reformed?) school bully last night for bringing up the memory.

_Violence has always solved violence_, I chuckle at the thought as sleep regains its hold over me. Those times were what urged me to learn any semblance of control, hiding my violent side beneath a façade of basic anger or neutrality. For whatever reason, those memories had come back forth in my dreams, but I have no real explanation besides the return trip to Vacuo for winter break. _Which reminds me, I still have to invite Jade, don't I?_

/

It's the last day of classes, so all of the teachers are taking it easy, including Professor Goodwitch, who'd commandeered the large training arenas that are normally for student individual use. As we're waiting around to see what she's up to, I nudge Jade's shoulder.

"What's up?" she turns her head.

"So, winter break. Got any plans?" I inquire, partially hopeful that she answers in the negative. She shakes her head with a sigh, eyes cast at the floor.

"I was planning on staying at school and training. I thought I told you already?"

"I was just checking if anything changed," I take in some air before continuing. "If you aren't doing anything, Aruna and I are going back to Vacuo over break, if you want to join us."

"What?"

"Well, I'm not exactly a fan of leaving a teammate behind and alone all winter break," I shrug. "So, if you want to join me and Aruna, the offer's on the table."

"I…I think I'd like that. Where would I be staying?"

"Somewhere in her house, just like me. I have no home to speak of, so her parents are very lenient with their guest rooms." I stretch out on the bench, putting my hands behind my head and leaning against the back rest.

"You…stay at her house often?"

"Well, it's her guest room or this tiny room I dug out of an abandoned building in the city. Guess which one I picked," I poke her with my elbow.

"So, you're homeless. Technically."

"I carry most of my possessions in a single suitcase and a backpack. What did you expect?"

"Fair enough. I have an apartment back in the outskirts of Mistral, but it's fairly empty."

"Sounds about right for a master assassin." Before the conversation can continue, the professor calls everyone to attention, directing their gazes to the large scoreboard at the side of the large arena room. All the students in the class appear divided into two sides. There's also a row of…dodgeballs…down the center line.

"Because it's the last day before winter break, the headmaster is making me allow you all to compete in a friendly game of dodgeball. He says it's a stress-relieving and fun activity for the last day. Divide into the teams on the board, and we can begin." Goodwitch drops her posture and returns to her seat in the spectator's chair, high above the arena.

"Sounds like fun," I pull myself to my feet.

/

In case you've never played sports involving teams of hunters who are trained in using their auras—don't. While the dodgeballs were clearly reinforced somehow to withstand aura-empowered strikes, it was still chaos. There was Jade, Ren, Blake, me, Aruna, Velvet, and a few others who were used to dodging projectiles at high speeds, and we did fine, but everyone else got pelted hard and fast very quickly. Even the Mistral Regional Tournament champion had some trouble staying upright. In the end it came down to Ren versus me and Jade. And then just me. And guess who's more skilled at using aura to make the dodgeball _curve in midair and swipe someone's feet out from under them_. Hint: It's not me.

On the upside, Ozpin was right on the game being fun…however painful it ended up being. Despite some minor injuries, our auras all healed us up just fine within a few minutes. Plus, it seemed to be an unwritten rule to decimate Team CRDL right away. They were on our side of the arena, but no one made a move while the entire opposition (especially the faunus) piled them under the red rubber spheres. I winced at the sight, feeling sympathy at least for the brunette members of the team. Even with Cardin's attempts to change, I doubt he's met with much success, based on that. After he dug himself out of the pit, he seemed red-faced and angry, but it was to be expected.

With the trip back to Vacuo planned for tomorrow afternoon, and classes officially over for the semester, the student body hosted a party during the evening for everyone to hang out, and everything felt surprisingly good among the happy students and the blasting music.


	17. Chapter 17

"Hey, so, Jade's joining us on the trip back home," I inform my team leader as I pack up my things into the suitcase and backpack.

"She is, huh?" Aruna slips one of her tomahawks into a cloth casing before putting it into her own luggage.

"Yeah. You said I could invite her."

"Right. You two have been spending a lot of time together."

"We live in the same room."

"I mean…outside of that. Anything I should know about?" She stands up and turns around to look at me.

"We have an understanding. Dark pasts and homelessness and all. It's nice to have someone to relate to," I shrug, continuing to pack up.

"Just don't let it get in the way of the team dynamic or…anything." I can't help but chuckle at her tone: almost wistful.

"There we go with the over-protective side of you again. I can protect myself just fine, Aruna. I'm a hunter-in-training," I smile and glance up at her.

"Yes, physically, you're very close to a monster, but mentally? I've seen what can happen if you lose control," she strides over, closing the gap between us and placing a form grip on my shoulder. "I'm just looking out for you."

"As you always do, fireball," I throw in my nickname for her, inciting a small laugh from the girl. "Jade and I just enjoy each others' company. You _know_ we're both impossible in social situations alone."

"Right. Well, let's get everything ready to go: Jade and Ember will be back with our takeout for lunch soon." With that, she lets her hand slip from my shoulder and returns to her bags.

/

"Aruna, we're here," I poke her head in order to get her awake and off of my shoulder. Jade had fallen into silence after Aruna'd passed out, but she seems fine now as the redhead stretches and pulls herself up.

"My dad should be at the gates," she grabs her bags from the overhead. "Let's go, kiddos."

"Kiddos? I'm the oldest one here," Jade pouts as she gets her own luggage.

"Oh, by a few weeks," I wave it off, a smile on my face as I see her puffed cheeks. "Come on."

/

"Welcome to my not-exactly-humble abode," Aruna spreads her arms wide and turns around to witness Jade's expression at the large foyer.

"Holy…you live here?" Jade glances around the nicely decorated area, with the few portraits strung around the walls. There's a circular staircase leading up to the second-floor balcony.

"Yep. It's cozy, ain't it?" the redhead beams, her hands on her hips.

"S-sure."

"Come on, I'll show you around," Aruna continues on through the house, beginning the tour. Both of us fall behind a bit while Aruna's dad goes back to his office.

"_You_ live here?" Jade whispers to me.

"There was a spare room. Especially since the…nevermind," I suck air in through my teeth. Truth: Aruna's family moved from their original house to the larger one after her mom got pregnant. Aruna's still an only child, and her dad is a single father. After the car accident, Mr. Bromwell had the spare room still, and he gave it to me, seeing as Aruna and I got along really well. Secretly, I think he also needed to fill the house with some noise to help him cope.

Outside of the large foyer and staircase, the house is what one might normally expect from a two-story four-bedroom house, with decent-sized hallways and plenty of room to roam about. The fourth bedroom was most likely cleared out for Jade, but normally was used as a sort of work station. The office is on the first floor, behind a set of double-doors, and there's a workout/training area in the basement. There's also a giant husky-wolf hybrid, Kona, which tackles Aruna to the ground near the end of the tour.

"Kona! Hey there, doggie!" Aruna wraps her arms around her neck as Kona licks her face.

"That's a…giant…dog there," Jade seems frozen in shock.

"Yep. Meet Kona ," I chuckle, gesturing to the pet. Kona barks happily before directing her attention to me, her aura flaring an icy blue before she jumps at me, tongue hanging out of her mouth. "Wait, no, no no no!" My protests mean nothing as Kona tackles me as well, freezing me solid to the floor with a burst of her semblance.

"A battle husky," Jade appraises with a giggle. "Interesting."

"Yeah, yeah, laugh it up," I grumble as Kona licks my head. "Aruna? A bit of help?"

"You're helpless," Aruna gets to her feet and laughs along with Jade, one arm crossed under her chest, and the other one with her lighter raised. The small flame bursts forth, passing over me and melting the ice that's holding me in place. I drag myself up, wrenching some of the water from my shirt.

"You have a dog…that can freeze things?" Jade can't help the smile playing across her lips as she inquires about Kona's ice abilities.

"Only by contact," Aruna explains. "And she can't always control it, either."

"Yeah, she only unlocked it a year ago," I scratch behind the dog's ears. Even on all fours, she's three feet tall, with blue eyes and a dark grey fur instead of the normal black of a regular husky. The white areas are the same on her as any other husky, making her appear like an arctic wolf. "Wanna go for a walk around town?

"It couldn't hurt. Jade?" Aruna turns to the guest.

"I'd be fine with a walk," Jade rubs her upper arms, tapping her thin blade gauntlets.

"You seem more ready to chop someone's head off," I lean against the wall.

"I'm just…uncomfortable. New area and all," she turns her head away.

"Fireball, can you go walk Kona? I think Jade would rather see the training arena downstairs," I push myself up the wall and walk over to Jade, ready to guide her to the room with all the punching bags and weights and targets.

"I guess," Aruna purses her lips and goes off to find the leash. Kona barks once before following the redhead.

"You look like you need to let loose," I tap Jade on the shoulder before making my way to the basement stairs. Jade seems instantly amazed at the large room, set up as part-obstacle course, part-sparring arena. And of course, all-parts badass. While she takes in the environment, I sit on top of one of the high-jump stools, focusing my semblance on the assassin in red. The slight veil of shadows around her floats towards my open palm, resting there momentarily before the flashes hit my mind's eye.


	18. Chapter 18

A/N Standardly this chapter would be some sort of holiday adventure sort of thing: Having normal lives and celebrating some equivalent of Christmas/New Year's. However I have a hard time writing such things as I have little experience with what is the "standard" of them. So…I'm gonna put Jade's memory flash thing, the usual aftermath of Kevin+bad memories from semblance+person he cares about (that will probably be a common theme later).

"Jade," I speak up as she finishes taking a drink from her water bottle.

"Hmm?" she turns and looks at me, wiping the sweat from her brow with the back of her hand.

"Are you okay? I know that you felt…something, back upstairs. The voice didn't exactly pinpoint anything, but it was buzzing around up here," I poke my temple.

"I…don't know what you're talking about," she shakes her head.

"Jade…I saw a few memories, too. Christmas is a bad time for you?"

"I…slaughtered an entire village—or at least did half of it. I…Christmas…just. I…don't know how it works," Jade motions for me to move over so that she can sit down next to me. I shuffle to my right, letting her take a rest.

"You don't know how what works?" I rest my elbows on my knees.

"Christmas," she mutters quietly.

"Jade, I've only lived in this house long enough to experience Christmas once. I can tell you this much, though: You don't need to understand something in order to enjoy it. My own Christmas endeavor before being one of the Bromwells? I raided some family's kitchen and took their entire Christmas feast."

"Did you eat it all?" she giggles, probably imagining me eating an entire turkey in one bite.

"Of course not. I'm only human," I roll my eyes. "But there's something else. You…that feeling from earlier. I just can't shake it. I need to know."

"I…just. Seeing you, and Aruna, and Kona? I wish I had that. My assassin family was like that in the beginning, until things started changing. I want that again: a sense of family."

"Jade," I put my hand on her shoulder, catching her gaze. "You have me, and our team. You have Beacon. It's one of the biggest families there is."

"I guess you're right. I just feel uncomfortable around them sometimes, you know? People…I just can't help but feel my hands itch around them, like I might just stab them out of habit," she wrings her hangs together, looking back down at the floor.

"I can't really relate, but trust me: It won't happen unless you let it. Come on, it's winter break. Enough with the depressing stories," I get to my feet, offering my hand to pull Jade up as well.

"Whatever. Let's go," she rolls her eyes with a smile.

/

"How was your break, Ember?" Aruna taps her partner's shoulder.

"Amazing," the blonde sings and slips her left arm out of her leather jacket, revealing the robotic arm in full. She "flexes" the machinery with a big grin on her face. "I got those new upgrades I was talking about."

"Upgrades?" I raise my brow.

"Call me Altair," she snaps her hand back, and the panels of her inner arm open up and shift before a thin blade extends from it, about the length of her forearm and made of two segments. It rests right against her arm. I notice that despite the pristine silver of the blade, the area right past the tip of it is serrated the slightest bit. "It makes my arm tons less bulky than when it turned into a drill. I don't have the lighter function anymore, though. What about you guys? How was break?"

"It was fun. Aruna and Kevin have a dog!"

"Ooh, puppy!" Ember beams as she slips her jacket back over her white blouse. While we'd definitely gotten her comfortable without her gloves over the semester, she still likes her long sleeves.

"Her name's Kona. She freezes things on contact," I introduce the Bromwell family pet.

"Wait," Ember furrows her brow and leans in, "Aruna _and_ Kevin have _a_ dog? Did you guys go through a divorce or something?" Her golden eyes lock onto my dark purple ones. Under her gaze, I can't help but feel nervous, running my hand through my spiked hair.

"No no no, nothing like that. My dad sort of half-adopted Kevin two years ago," Aruna drops a nervous chuckle as well as a bomb of information.

"So you…and you," Ember points from me to Aruna.

"Fireball and I live together, yeah. And we have a dog—Well, Aruna has a dog. She likes me better, though," I smirk and glance at the redhead.

"It's because she thinks you're one of her kind," she deflects, pushing my shoulder.

"Oh, you've shattered my nonexistent heart!" I joke, clutching a hand to my chest.

"It was like this all week," Jade complains. "Except they dragged me into it." Aruna and I both laugh at this. Except for that first day, there were almost no negative emotions from Jade, so I know she at least was indifferent to our interactions.

/

We continue to catch up and exchange stories during the last week as the other students of Beacon started to come back. Team BYRN joined Sun at the docks to wait for Neptune—one of Sun's teammates—to arrive. All the students were back by the last day of break, eating lunch together, when silence suddenly overcomes the section of the lunchroom around teams RWBY and JNPR.

"That can't be good," Aruna mumbles, shaking her head after noticing the area of change. The sound of food splattering against a surface reaches our ears. Followed by more. And more. And then some of it lands right next to us. Velvet visibly jumps up with a yelp while the rest of us get up and scatter, looking for the source. Team RWBY, of course, starting a food fight. The other students, us included, start to run, avoiding the flying plates and food as JNPR (namely, Nora) starts to stack the tables up into a large formation.

"Run run run run," I turn and charge for the door, perfectly aware of the situation unfolding. RWBY vs JNPR in a food fight? No thank you. Every other student seems to have the same idea. The bass thuds of watermelons colliding with bodies and the floor echo outside of the mess hall as almost everyone escapes the building, except for RWBY and JNPR as they square off. From across the quad, I can see a mess of blonde hair burst from the ceiling, trailing like a comet in reverse as Yang disappears into the atmosphere.

"Damn," Ember clicks her tongue.

A/N I changed Ember's arm functionality, mainly because, despite the original novel character Ember having the drill hand, I like the idea of Ember adapting into using a blade, just like her teammates. After all, Ember still has a HEAVY HITTING ROBOT HAND OF DEATH, that would barely be boosted by a spinning drill hand.

Things might seem to have moved quickly, with 18,800 words ish (1,100x18?)probably equaling the entire season. However, during this time, I believe that Team BYRN would be seen as background, still not really involved, as there's nothing exposed for them to be involved with (Ruby met Torchwick, Weiss' company is related, and Blake's former White Fang, so they're all heavily invested in the major bad guys' plan). Season 2 will involve the beginning of speculation on my part, as Season 3 isn't here yet, and will lead to Team BYRN being actually involved. By linking Sun and Kevin, we can start pushing involvement with the main antics that way.

In case you haven't noticed (I might've not made this obvious because DERP): Aruna, Jade, and Kevin all have very grimm-killing semblances. Aruna has FIRE, which has been shown to make grimm uneasy, at least. Kevin's semblance runs on negative energy—which, in my mind, is the essence of the grimm. Meaning that given a few seconds of prep he has power proportionate to the enemies he faces. And Jade's semblance allows her to go THROUGH grimm, as long as she returns to a safe spot for a few seconds every ten seconds. This makes team BYRN (which I realized all wears red to some degree. At least in the original designs) a good grimm-extermination team. This will be used almost right away in "Season 2."


	19. Chapter 19

Chapter 19: A break. This isn't a real chapter, sorry, but I just needed to have something to clarify my intentions of this story's characters.

Character descriptions because I might've failed to give proper descriptions throughout Season 1.

Kevin Nakamura: The second-tallest of the group (same height as Ren). Of Asian descent, as implied. No family, although has a high sense of siblinghood with Aruna. Tends to wear a zip-up hoodie and collared shirt with jeans and combat boots. Lots of black and dark colors, with a purple aura. Purple-black eyes. Black hair, faux-hawk style. Fights through agility, flips/kicks, and counter-attacks.

Personality: Capable of being friendly/helpful to those he cares about, but tends to be rather sarcastic and aggressive otherwise. His natural state is pretty happy, but his semblance begins to affect this as time goes on.

Semblance: Shadow's Mirror. Kevin can take the negative energy from people (based on current emotional states: Specifically pain, anger, fear, sadness, jealousy. People within these states are considered sources of material for his semblance. Sources can be visually alerted to him by a smoky presence surrounding them (only he sees this), or by a voice whispering in his head the current emotion they are feeling (He needs to have had visual contact with a source in order to use it. Sources can be drained of all current energy relevant to his semblance).

The material used appears as shadows, and can be used by Kevin for basic physical utility. The automatic manifestation of the shadows is as a thin armor around him, which acts as a second layer on top of his aura, but can also be used as a pushing force or other physical things (creativity necessary). Upon drawing shadows to himself, enters a brief state of raw pain or anger, before being free to use the shadows. The pain/anger stays constant throughout the use of the shadows, starting at almost nothing after the initial burst before slowly rising higher and higher. When Kevin releases control of the shadows, this stops the pain/anger, and disperses the shadows around him in a low-power burst. Grimm and himself can be used as sources with a bit of extra effort.

Weapons: Noctus and Sivir, a low-angle grip rifle with a bayonet and stock (which has a retracting section for one-handed or two-handed use), and an unfolding circular shield gauntlet. The shield can spin into a buzzsaw. The rifle's angle and design make it easy to be held as a strange sort of sword.

/

Aruna Bromwell: Third-tallest. Battle gear consists of a black leather vest with lapels, metal bracelets on her arms, jeans, and combat boots. There are holsters on her thighs that hold her tomahawks, which slide upwards into her hands. She has a short spiky bob of red with upturned bangs, which glimmers in the light, and blue eyes. Fights through speed and agility, using her hands mostly.

Personality: Aruna is a socialite, being kind to others and always caring. Is very protective of Kevin's emotional state, and is friendly overall. She has a very tactical mind in terms of picking the best situations, but her on-the-fly calls are usually delegated to Kevin. Capable of inspiring others easily, and has a natural eye for weakpoints in enemies.

Semblance: Control over fire. Can't create it, but only requires a small flame in order to create more from there. After a time, finds out that with some focus, she can start a fire from the spark inside of a gun when it fires.

Weapons: Twin tomahawks that unfold (See: the Insurrectionist Leader from Red vs Blue). Can connect at the handle bases into a sort of staff. Two arm bracelets, which eventually will have lighters installed on the inner-arm near the wrist for use. Until that point, she carries a lighter at all times (A gift from Kevin).

/

Jade Yamihari: Shortest of the group. A slender girl with long black hair and sweeping bangs. Battle gear consists of a high-collared sleeveless shirt in dark red, as well as detached sleeves with buckles at the shoulders. Her weapons, wide-edged forearm blades, attach over these sleeves, along with fingerless gloves. She wears black tight jeans with brown knee-high boots. She was raised in an assassin until she decided to become a huntress. Fights very similarly to Kevin, but with less counter-attacks, and a lot more speed.

Personality: Is naturally anxious around people, having been used to only killing them, and not interacting much otherwise. She's bonded strongly with Aruna and Kevin, hiding behind them during social confrontations. Otherwise, she is capable of kindness, having built Kevin's weapons for him. She longs for a sense of family, which she receives from her team.

Semblance: Ethereal Phasing. Can turn into a ghost-like form, which can go through any object at will, except for aura. In this state, Jade can be propelled at high speeds if contact with aura is made, and she is able to float in the sense of the way that one sinks when underwater.

Weapons: Arm gauntlets that deploy forearm blades. See: Edward Elric. Except entirely mechanical and not built into an arm.

/

Ember Rosemary: Tallest of the group. A curvy girl with mid-back length blonde hair and choppy bangs. She wears red biking goggles on her head at all times. Standardly, she wears tight pants, a graphic tee or blouse of some variety, and an unzipped leather jacket. She has a robotic left arm as a result of an accident, which makes it easy for her to wield her weapon, a high-powered underslung machine gun. Fights with power and heavy hits.

Personality: Very outgoing and personable, always looking for the fun in things. Enjoys music greatly, as shown by her music references and natural skill at DDR. She is protective of her friends. Her personality greatly contrasts her past, seemingly fine despite the trauma involved in losing a limb.

Semblance: None

Weapons: Shredder- A giant machine gun that folds up onto her back. Activated by a button on the right side connecting shoulder strap. Left-handed weapon similar to Coco's. Her robot arm can deploy a long thin blade (See: Altair/Assassin's Creed), and has been shown to contain at least one other short blade for utility purposes (lock-picking, car-jacking). She carries a heavy pistol on her right hip.

/

Story Summary up to this point:

Kevin Nakamura is one of the incoming freshmen at Beacon academy, and had made it in despite not having a weapon. This is because of unfortunate circumstances. During initiation, he meets up with his friend-revealed to be his best friend from the primary combat school back home, as well as a housemate-and her partner. This forms the full team: Aruna Bromwell, Jade Yamihari, Ember Rosemary, and Kevin Nakamura. Jade's shyness and Kevin's natural tendency for isolation cause Aruna to bring them all in for some fun in town, which turns out to be a good idea. Kevin's being placed on an otherwise-all-girls teams garners some unfortunate attention from others, but he manages to ignore it. He also unlocks his semblance: A strange yet potentially powerful tool, and the group spends some time learning all they can about it. Jade, seeing Kevin's duress on all the paperwork needed to gain first-time access to the weapons forge, fofers to build a weapon for him, which he accepts. This sets him up with all the basic tools of a hunter. Kevin saves Velvet from Cardin's bullying, and meets Coco as a result. The CFVY leader puts team BYRN to the test in a grimm extermination, running into the "Colussus Beowolf," a large four-armed creature that a mix of tactics supposedly scared off.

While in town with Aruna, Kevin notices one of his old friends from Vacuo: Sun. He follows the faunus, technically meeting Penny in the process, and catches up. Showing Jade around Vale during the Vytal festival, he runs into Sun again, and Kevin gets to introduce the faunus to the entirety of Team BYRN. They spend the day together. There's mentions of Cardin wanting to change his ways. With winter break coming up, Kevin offers Jade to join him and Aruna back in the Bromwell household in Vacuo, knowing that she lacks any sense of a real home or family. They have fun over break, including a last-day-of-the-semester dodgeball game. Kevin helps Jade come to terms with her lack of understanding of celebrations, as he was in the same position a year ago. Back at Beacon, the team finds out that Ember got a new robotic arm, replacing the drill-hand with a sleeker assassin-style blade.

The last day of break, the group runs out of the cafeteria to avoid getting pelted by the food of a food fight between RWBY and JNPR.


	20. Chapter 20

A/N this is where things start to really change compared to canon. Currently it's going to be just inserting the characters into canon events, getting them involved beyond the basic notions. BYRN's investigations into the matters at hand might lead to some side-tracking arcs into the characters' past.

I snap up from my mattress, one hand steadily held in front of me in a defensive position, and sweat beading off of my forehead. Memories had struck me in my sleep: The Colossus Beowolf's. Fighting, running, terror, and pain, had paralyzed me and sent chills down my spine. There was also the fury: Pure fury and energy that I imagine I could call upon for my semblance, however risky. I slip back into my nest of blankets and pillows, shuddering, and hoping to salvage the remaining darkness outside for some sleep.

/

Professor Port's lecture/story is interrupted by the bell. As he dismisses us, I shake my head clear of the voice whispering in the back of my head. Seeing as my time in the city had always cleared my mind, at least as a temporary reprieve, I make preparations to head there once I'm at the dorms. To my surprise, Ember follows me out.

"Any particular reason you're stalking me?" I turn and glance at the blonde.

"You seem distant. Heading into the city?" she responds with little pause, adopting a slightly confrontational stance.

"It seemed like a good way to get my mind off of some things," I shrug, tugging my hoodie sleeve in order to conceal the end of the Sivir gauntlet. It's still pretty obvious when it's sitting there on my arm, but it'd become habit anyway. "What about you?"

"I thought that Jade and Aruna needed to talk some things out, so I'm leaving them alone for now," she clicks her tongue and catches up to me, indicating for us to keep walking.

"What could they have to talk about? We already spent most of winter break together," I question, my mind flipping through memories to try and come up with a topic of concern involving those two. I'd think that my incorporating Jade into our activities would've made Aruna happy, seeing as she wanted me to have more friends, anyway.

"Really?" Ember deadpans at me, clearly having expected me to have some sort of guess on the matter.

"What? I don't know: there's not really much for them to talk about. Nothing's new," I defend, holding my hands out to the side.

"I can't tell if you're purposely ignoring it or you're actually as dense as that Jaune guy," Ember grimaces. I furrow my brow at this, and silence consumes the halls except for the sound of Ember's heels clicking against the floor.

"So, notice all the Atlas ships outside?" I glance at the window.

"With the White Fang increasing its presence and the Vytal Festival coming up, I guess they just want more security. Atlas' military surely covers that need."

"True. Hopefully there won't be a need of them to do much. We're about to have one of the largest congregations of hunters and huntresses of the year, after all." Ember nods at this as we make our way to the airship bay in order to catch a plane into Vale.

/

"That looks interesting," I point to one of the platforms in the city, where a hologram of General Ironwood, from Atlas, is seen. Behind him, there are Atlesian Knights, or the robotic soldiers the Atlas military uses in place of human soldiers on occasion. As we walk forward to see what the whole congregation of the crowd is about, I notice a flash of red to my left.

"Ruby?" I raise my brow, recognizing the short scythe wielder, with a ginger-haired girl in a green outfit behind her. She seems familiar for some reason. I nudge Ember's shoulder so that she turns and sees me going over to the pair. "You guys are hanging out in town, too?"

"I think it's just her. The rest of team RWBY isn't in sight," Ember glances around, one hand on her bike goggles as she gets on her toes for a higher vantage point.

"I-it's just me, and Penny. Sorry, we didn't expect to run into anyone we knew, Kevin," Ruby scratches the back of her head.

"Are they your friends, Ruby?" the ginger, identified as Penny, turns to the red-themed girl.

"Yeah."

"Fantastic! Any friend of Ruby's is a friend of mine!" Penny declares, sticking her hand out in my direction. "I'm Penny!"

"Kevin," I nod, taking her hand in mine. _Strong grip_, I wince as her fingers wrap around my hand and give a handshake. Honestly, it's on par with Ember's robotic hand, which brings some concern as to the girl's fighting power, if she's a huntress.

"Ember," the blonde beside me leans over slightly in order to shake the ginger's hand. She seems unaffected by her strength, but then again I'm not sure if there's any nerve endings within Ember's robot limb.

"You…look familiar," Penny remarks, getting in my personal space more than expected.

"I, uh…I don't know," I lean back, scratching my head.

"You're the guy who was chasing that faunus last month!" she jumps up in recognition. "I remember!"

"Yeah, he was a friend," I shrug. "No hard feelings about knocking you to the ground?"

"It didn't hurt at all," she waves it off. "I'm combat ready!" The sound of metal slamming against the ground makes us all look up and turn our attention to the platform that Ember and I had been looking at earlier. Outside of the large boxes that were behind the Atlesian Knights appears to be sleeker versions, with more rounded features and more white armor on them. Ironwood appears to be giving some speech on the matter before his own hologram vanishes, replaced with a large mech, equipped with a lot of guns, while his voice continues to introduce the specimen.

_Confusion…worry…_ the voice whispers in my head while Ruby points to some normal Atlesian soldiers, who seem to gesture to Penny before turning and starting after us. There's a small level of smoke around them, and I absorb it after noticing Penny and Ruby take off.

_"The Delta Initiative must be protected. Do not let it be exposed_," some voice from the soldiers' memories strikes at my mind while I manipulate the shadows to assist my aura further into pushing power into my legs as I run after Ruby and Penny. Ember seems to have similar ideas, although using her aura alone.

"Why are we running?" I kick off of the alley wall in order to make the sharp turn, following the young Rose. "Did you accidentally blow up the docks again?"

"Sun told you about that?" she whines as she follows Penny.

"We go way back," I shrug, jumping over a stack of crates and leaping off of it right before Ruby deploys her scythe and knocks it up behind us, blocking off the soldiers giving chase. With Penny running down a visible dead end, Ruby seems to lock onto her target, launching forward with a burst of speed and grabbing the girl. Shouting "This way!" she takes a hard right, disappearing in a flash of rose petals.

_Jealousy_, the voice taunts in my mind, recognizing the talent of the young Rose where my own abilities seem weak in comparison. As I turn around the alley, I notice Ruby in the middle of the street, and the sound of a truck. Ember appears beside me during my temporary stop, and appears equally dumbfounded as Penny pushes Ruby out of the way and stops the truck…with her bare hands…and causing the vehicle to lurch into the air momentarily.

_Fear_, the voice almost shouts in my head, in triplicate. Three sources? Probably Ruby, Penny, and the truck driver. The shadows sort of surround every person in view. A strong hand grips my shoulder, and Ember yelps, indicating a similar predicament. With a nod, we twist ourselves around and punch the soldiers in the face, incapacitating them enough for us to run up and catch up to Penny and Ruby, who seem to have run away even farther. Just in case, I begin to gather the shadows around my feet, seeing the truck incident from multiple perspectives as the instigating memories flash against my mind.

Then I run into Penny's own encounter, which includes quick flashes of schematics…that look vaguely like her…flashing across her eyeballs as she holds her hands out in front of the truck. There's a triangle in the upper-left corner of "her" vision, stylized, with two gauges extending to the side from it. The green bar depletes slightly after contact with the truck, and Penny's vision…blips out like a computer error…for a brief second.

_That triangle…The ancient symbol for Delta? What is this?_ I pull myself to a halt in front of the pair. Penny seems very nervous and dodgy. Makes sense, considering the reactions from the crowd at the truck crash.

"Ruby, Kevin, Ember…you're my friends, right?" the ginger holds her arms close to her stomach. We each nod in turn. "Well, I'm…I'm not a real girl." She opens up her hands, revealing cold steel under grafted and ripped flesh.

"Oh," Ruby goes wide-eyed, glancing at Penny's open palms.

"Figures," I click my tongue, going back to the memories of the technical specs and information running over Penny's eyes.


	21. Chapter 21

"What a surprise, the girl who can stop a truck with her hands is actually a robot," I sigh, glancing back down the alleyway.

"Penny, I don't understand," Ruby shakes her head. Ember seems more enthusiastic and curious than surprised, although I can already attribute this to her natural connection, having a robotic limb.

"Most girls are born. I was made. I'm the first synthetic being capable of producing an aura. I'm not real," Penny looks down at the ground, clenching her hands in sadness. Ruby moves forward, grabbing the girl's hands.

"Of course you are," Ruby starts, trying to console her. "You think just because you have nuts and bolts instead of squishy guts and stuff makes you any less real than me?"

"I don't, um…You all are taking this surprisingly well," Penny leans in, a suspicious glare cast at all of us.

"I already knew," I shrug.

"I'm a cyborg!" Ember rolls up her sleeve, revealing her metal arm in full.

"Penny, you have a heart, and a soul, I can feel it," Ruby pokes Penny where a human's heart would be. Penny moved in and picks the girl up in a smothering hug.

"Oh, Ruby, you're the bestest friend anyone could have!" the robot swings the scythe-wielder side to side. Ruby mumbles something that that I can't make out, except for the word "father."

"Oh, my father is very sweet. He's the one that built me! I'm sure you would just love him," Penny nods, almost assuring herself.

"Wow, he built you all by himself?" Ruby raises an eyebrow.

"Almost. He had some help from Mister Ironwood."

"The General? Is that why those soldiers were after you?"

"They like to protect me, too," the robot smiles.

"They like to protect the 'Delta Initiative' is what they like to do," I mutter.

"What?" Everyone turns to me. Penny's hands, though pointed down, are outstretched in a ready-to-defend position.

"One of the soldiers was worried because of an order to protect the 'Delta Initiative.' Penny here has that symbol etched into her HUD. What exactly is it that your group is hiding?"

"I, uh….," Penny starts, taking a step back. "It is my job to save the world. That's why I'm here for the tournament. To test myself."

"Penny, what are you talking about? Saving the world? We're in a time of peace," Ruby declares.

"What's not what Mister Ironwood said," Penny tilts her head to the side. The sound of the soldiers calling to each other snaps us to attention. Penny orders Ruby to hide before tossing her into the dumpster.

"What was that—hey!" I protest as she lifts both Ember and I into the air and into the same metal box. Then she opens the lid and leans down in order to speak to us.

"Don't worry, they're not bad people. I just don't want my friends to get in trouble. Just promise that you won't tell anyone about my secret," Penny hardens her gaze.

"Promise," Ember salutes, and I mimic her action.

"I promise," Ruby confirms before Penny closes the lid. The soldiers catch up to Penny, asking her about the recent developments related to the truck and to us three. She seems entirely more innocent when talking to the soldiers, assuring them that it's just a scratch on her hands, although a hiccup from her contradicts the statement. _Do robots have a respiratory system?_

Ruby smiles at Penny's interactions before the sound of a rat spooks her…and the rest of us, too, flailing about in the dumpster momentarily before jumping out. We dust ourselves off before standing up again.

"Kevin, what was that about? What's the Delta Initiative?" Ruby turns on me, worry filling her silver eyes.

"That's what I would like to know. The soldiers seemed pretty adamant in protecting the Initiative, something that Penny is involved in. General Ironwood parked a military fleet at Beacon's doorstep. These things combined give me reason to worry."

"Don't worry, it's Penny. She's harmless, I'm sure of it," she waves it off.

"Sun told me that she singlehandedly stopped a group of bullheads at the docks," I deadpan, crossing my arms.

"W-well, she was protecting us! I don't think she'd do anything harmful," Ruby defends.

"Oh, sure, a secret revolutionary innovation made by the military's general just chilling in Vale, surrounded by a fleet of military destruction, at the same time of an unveiling of a new generation of military tech. That's a lot of military. I'd at least stay wary."

"Can we just drop it? If something happens, we'll be there to stop it," the girl assures.

"Fine."

"So…how's team BYRN?" the younger girl shuffles her feet, eager to push the conversation in a different direction.

"We're good. According to Ember, Aruna and Jade are at odds, but I seriously doubt it," I glance at the blonde. Conversation between us three continues into dusk, ranging from team relations to weaponry, and even to recipes for sweets (Ember appears to have a good deal of expertise on the subject, but is still immensely dwarfed by Ruby's knowledge). We're interrupted by Ruby's scroll ringing.

"Blake?" Ruby opens up the device, putting it on speaker.

"Everyone! If you can hear me, we need—," Blake starts from the other end of the line. Sun's voice interrupts her.

"Heeeeeelp! They've got a robot. And it's big. Really big!" he continues, his rant accompanying the sound of heavy footfalls that clearly belong to him and team RWBY's ninja, but also the larger telltale sounds of metal colliding with rock. _Giant robot? Ironwood's mech thing?_

"Ooh, I am not missing this!" Ruby runs off down the alley, her semblance assisting her speed.

"Wait, Ruby! Shit," I start running down the alley in order to try and follow, catching her general direction just as she disappears from view. "Now what?"

"Um, Kevin?" Ember's voice catches my attention from across the street. She's pointing to a speedy-looking motorcycle, long enough to seat two people and looking cool while doing it.

"Oh, yes please," I can't help but feel chills as I look at the specimen. "But, how do we get it to turn on?"

"Let me handle that," Ember smirks, swinging one leg over the most frontward section of the bike's seat and deploying her forearm-blade.

"Um, Ember, I don't think that that's how that," I start, before she stabs the thing straight into the key port. After a few seconds of electrical sparks, the bike starts up. Ember removes the blade before turning back to me, zipping up her leather jacket to just below her chest.

"What? You didn't think I only had the one blade tip in this thing?" she gives a playful smile, elbowing me as I get in position in the seat area behind her. "I'd hang on, shadow-boy."

"Shadow boy?" I raise my eyebrows as the blonde turns back forward, putting her hands on the bike's handles and her feet on the pedals on the sides of the bike.

"I said hang on," Ember sings as the bike lurches forward with a start, popping a slight wheely as the motorcycle skids out of the parking spot and into the street, speeding down the direction I saw Ruby go moments before. In the sudden change in momentum and burst of speed, I instinctively reach forward, wrapping my arms around Ember's midsection and resting my chin on her shoulder as the bike takes off. Luckily for me, she didn't bring Shredder with her, or I'd have knocked myself out against the metal backpack.

"Holy shit," I gulp as I try to bear the winds as much as possible, which only increase as we cross into the highway.


	22. Chapter 22

"Hey, there's Yang! And that other guy!" Ember points down the highway to the orange bike and its riders.

"Yep," I put my left hand in front of my face and gently push Ember's hair to the side. "And there's the giant robot!"

"Giant robot," Ember confirms as Neptune reaches back to grab his plasma rifle. Suddenly, cars start flying up off of the highway, around the robot…which at second glance is the real life version of the hologram from General Ironwood's presentation. The Atlesian Paladin. As Yang's bike swerves wildly to avoid getting smashed by the airborne cars, Ember speaks up again. "Kevin, can you use your semblance to make sure those passengers stay safe?"

"On it," I grit my teeth as I open my arms out to the side, extracting the shadows from the passengers of the flying vehicles. As one can imagine, there's a lot of pain and fear involved in being _flung into the air while inside of a car_. My body tenses entirely as pain wracks my limbs and head, before eventually relaxing. To my luck, the energy becomes mine to control just in time for the first vehicle to pass our own motorcycle.

"Shitshitshitshitshitshitshitshit," I spread my palms and send the energy out in a cloud around us, keeping a clear line of sight for Ember in front of us. The energy acts as a cushion, grabbing every vehicle and trying to deposit it gently onto the asphalt. The intense focus required to cushion the tumbling cars, remove a majority of the momentum, and put them down, in rapid succession, takes its toll, but luckily I'm able to stop most of them from ending up as a giant mesh of metal and guts. Then, the Paladin suddenly takes a dive, tumbling as well before skidding off of the protective barrier of the highway and onto the ground below. I don't see Yang and Neptune, but most likely they're also below us. Ember stops the bike near the open barrier section, directing it towards the opening.

"Oh, Ember, please don't," I shudder.

"Time for the mid-game boss!" she shouts before accelerating, driving straight off of the highway. Below us, it seems that all of Team RWBY is gathered in front of the Paladin, which rises as it rights itself. Weiss notices us in freefall, but the Paladin does not, all of its awareness features clearly not currently in use, as we fall from behind, the bike slamming into its left shoulder before careening towards Team RWBY.

"Oh god oh god oh fuck," I jump from the spinning and falling vehicle, noticing Ember doing the same. We both land on our feet besides Team RWBY, the bike slamming into the ground behind us.

"Welcome to the jungle," Yang offers, before Ruby shouts something or another. In response, Blake and the team leader launch themselves back, Weiss directing her dust-rapier to the ground, and Yang jumping straight up.

"I'm guessing we should follow their lead," Ember kicks off, backing away from Weiss, as I turn and run in order to do the same. I don't see it, but Yang slams into the ground with great force, somehow creating a large mist around the entire makeshift battleground. Small red lasers appear from the Paladin's position, clearly one of its targeting/awareness features. I duck to the side to avoid making contact, and it seems that Team RWBY has a similar idea. The Paladin seems to make contact with and focus on Yang (which makes sense: She's the least mobile of the group until she builds up enough energy from her semblance).

While the Paladin starts to work on that, I pull Ember to the side. "Do you have your weapons?"

"I have my pistol. What about you?"

"Only my shield," I roll up my right sleeve and flick the lever into my hand, deploying the weapon into its full buzzsaw/shield form. "We're going to need to use what we can to help. Like that broken bike that I hope we don't have to pay for."

"I got it," Ember smirks, running towards the discarded machinery. The Paladin manages to use one of its explosive rounds to knock both Yang and Blake out, but is interrupted by Ruby charging at it with her scythe. She jumps back after her strike, avoiding a swipe from the machine, before a broken bike soars through the air, colliding with the front end of the machine as Ruby calls another command. Weiss and Blake launch into action immediately, striking at its legs as well as its main infrared sensor. As the Paladin tries to stomp on Blake, Weiss' glyph rips her away from danger.

Bullets from Ember's pistol strike at one of the other sensors before missile pods start launching rockets at the monochrome pair. I'm alerted to Torchwick's frustration, as well as Team RWBY's well-suppressed fear, thanks to my semblance, and get to work on absorbing this as Weiss gets hit by one of the Paladin's bullets. Currently incapacitated by pain, I'm unable to do anything. She sends a strange clockwork glyph to Blake as she falls, seemingly empowering the girl in order to destroy the remaining missiles.

Ruby launches into action with Blake again soon after, swiping at its legs before launching into the air and then dropping, their strikes slicing off the Paladin's arm.

"Ember, how well does that cipher-hacker keyblade work?"

"Amazingly," Ember runs over to the discarded arm with me, a plan hatching. I notice Yang get knocked back by the Paladin's fist as Ember's arm starts to go to work on getting access to the weapon system of the Paladin arm. Using my semblance, I heave the business end of the arm up, aiming the weaponry at the Paladin as Blake uses the ribbon of her weapon in order to catch Yang before she flies too far away. The Paladin's other arm seems to have disappeared.

"Fire in the hole!" I order Ember, who initiates the weapons system just as Yang makes a circular pass at the Paladin, still hanging on to Blake's weapon. The Paladin steps back to avoid getting hit, and its discarded arm starts to pepper its sides with ammunition. Ruby and Weiss get in position to do…something, as the Paladin recovers from the initial burst, its broken arm on an unfortunate cooldown.

Before any of Ruby's sniper shots, seemingly empowered by Weiss' glyphs and dust, can reach the Paladin, it launches into the air, slamming its legs into the highway posts and them launching to another one, and another one, above our heads. This continues for a while, the wear clearly taking its toll with the creaking highway supports.

"We need to stop it!" Ruby points at one of the unstruck posts. Weiss sends a barrage of ice at it, coating it in crystal, as the Paladin flies towards the same post. It strikes the ice, tumbling away, but not before doing just enough damage to cause the supports to give. The Paladin-having full clearance above it—fires missiles from the pods by its shoulders, destroying the remaining integrity of the supports and bringing that section of the highway down on us.

"Weiss!" Ruby shouts as the snow-haired girl points her rapier to the ground. Ice crystallizes and surrounds us while I send my own semblance to work, condensing the energy into a secondary barrier around Weiss'. The combined efforts save us as we push away the debris on top of us, Weiss changing her tactic yet again with a series of glyphs above us in order to halt the progress of any cars surprised by the sudden lack of terrain.

The Paladin launches another barrage of missiles, directly at us this time, but is stopped by me throwing my semblance forward into another barrier, absorbing most of the impacts. The use of my semblance causes another small bout of pain to run through my arms. .Once the barrage ends, Yang launches forward through it, charging the Paladin as Ember throws a piece of debris using her robotic limb. The rubble collides first, hampering the Paladin's vision before Yang smashes her fist into it, pouring all of her gauntlets' rounds into the punch and causing the Paladin to fall apart and tumble away, revealing the pilot, who complains about the dirt on his white coat. She brings herself to her feet slowly, recovering from the sudden and drawn out exertion.

Ember draws her pistol and starts firing along with Ruby as I, though tired, gather and condense more shadows around my feet, ready to spring into action. Ember's shots are stopped by a new character: A girl with pink and brown hair, and two different-colored eyes, holding a parasol in front of her which absorbs the bullets.

"Well, this was an interesting night," Torchwick declares. "Neo, if you would." The short brown/pink-haired girl bows with her parasol behind her as Yang launches forward again in a rage, fist drawn back. As she makes contact with the pair, their images shatter like glass, leaving nothing behind.

"What?" almost everyone voices their wonder, looking around for any sign of them. Blake points out the bullhead rising in the distance, Torchwick visible in the side door, giving a mock salute as the bullhead picks up speed to fly away.

More pain and anger fill my system as I gather more shadows from the sources around me, moving all of it into my shield. I surprisingly let out a guttural roar as I swing my right arm up, launching a disc of shadow towards the soaring vehicle at incredible speed, trailing excess energy behind it. The low whistle of the apparition is interrupted by a rocket from Torchwick's cane as the pair make their getaway virtually unscathed.

"Damn," I click my tongue as I release my hold on my semblance. There's no burst of the unused energy, as all of it had gone into the projectile, but the wave of relief floods my system, being freed from the almost unbearable pain that my semblance had accrued in me. Its slow incline of pressure had reached its peak, but now there's nothing but aftershocks. Exhaustion follows relief, my legs buckling under me and my vision going dark as I collapse onto the ground.


	23. Chapter 23

A/N I hope that my attempted incorporation of Ember and Kevin worked well enough, as well as showcasing Kevin's utility with his semblance. After all, what happened to all those flying civilian cars? I would've shown the armor aspect of it, making its secondary defense around Kevin, but his lack of offensive capabilities in the situation without his rifle would've made him a low priority to Torchwick, in my mind.

Aruna's sort of look thing: art/Aruna-Bromwell-534096132

/

I wake up with a groan…in the hospital…again. To my benefit, Jaune had ended up here more often, a result of being one of the weaker first-year students and being surrounded by all the explosive powers of his team as well as team RWBY. I'd only ended up here twice so far. This second time, I notice Weiss, Ruby, Blake, and Yang on the opposite end of the room.

"What the shit…?" I turn my hands over in front of me, surprised to see a bunch of healing scabs and scratches.

"The doctors said that your limbs are covered in a bunch of small scratches. We don't know if it's from the getting a highway dropped on you, or something else," Ruby explains, seeing that I'm awake.

"The pain should only be mental," I mumble. _Maybe it was from the rubble…hopefully._

"How'd you end up at that highway, anyway?" Weiss questions.

"I, uh…ran into him while I was out with Penny," Ruby touches her index fingers together, hunching over in worry.

"Oh, this is all a big mess," Yang shakes her head. "I thought letting Sun and Neptune in on it was bad enough."

"Penny," I growl, gripping the sheets of the scruffy medical cot.

"Kevin, I thought we'd moved past that," Ruby steps forward.

"Penny might not be hostile, but Penny is also programming: However evolved. I worry not about the real her, but anything hidden within that shell that even _she_ doesn't know about," I glance at the team leader before sliding out of the cot, finding myself in a pair of basketball shorts and a simple t-shirt. "Oh, I have a headache. I'm going back to my dorm."

"No, you're staying," Weiss moves to stand in between me and the door. "You're involved now, and regardless, I have a few questions about your semblance."

"I do not appreciate interrogation," I bring myself to my full height, looking her in the eye.

"She doesn't mean for interrogation," Blake speaks up. "It is more out of concern than anything else."

"How does your semblance work? It was powerful enough to stop a barrage of missiles, lift up a robotic arm, and help defend against a falling highway. What even is it?" Weiss puts her hands on her hips. "It reminded me a lot of Miss Goodwitch's own capabilities."

"Well, it's not. Telekinesis is a lot different than…whatever I have," I glance at my hands.

"Didn't you perform tests on it before?" Yang questions aloud.

"It's changed. Slightly, but it has. I didn't end up seeing any memories when I….Nevermind."

"No. Answers. Now." Weiss points towards the ground in front of me to emphasize her point. "Ember's only explanation was that you could see…things."

"Well, everyone sees things. We have eyes, after all," I shrug, trying to push past the pressure in the room and get to the door, only to have Weiss' rapier at my chin. "Why do you care so much, Schnee?"

"Because it's relevant. Will you let us help you or not?"

"There's nothing to be helped. My semblance is under _control_," I growl, my hands clenching into fists.

"Just tell her. She can get obsessive about secrets sometimes," Ruby's voice wavers in worry. After a pause, I step back and relax.

"We call it Shadow's Mirror. I can see negative emotions in people when they have them. I can see the negativity surrounding all of you right now," I look around the room, noting the shadows rising from each of them. Fear runs rampant across their minds, if the Voice is any indication. "I can absorb that negativity and turn it into something physical that I can manipulate, but every use drains my sources."

"Your sources?" Blake checks my wording.

"If I were to use my semblance right now, you'd be my sources," I answer, opening my palm and bracing for the initial pain. To my luck, gathering a small amount seems to equal a lesser initial burst of pain. I still wince as I gather the shadows surrounding Blake into a sphere in my palm, holding it out in front of me. Another bout of luck: Blake seems to be able to follow the trail of shadows leading from her to the sphere in my hand.

"I see. I also saw the pain in your face a moment ago," her amber eyes lock onto mine. "What was that?"

"This ball of energy is a manifestation of your fear, pain, anger, malice, jealousy, or sadness. I experience pain as a result of having it near me," I release my semblance's activation, watching the small ball pop, sending a flurry of black mist everywhere before it dissipates into nothingness. "Well, you all know, so can I go now? I'm sure my team is equally worried—Probably more, actually."

_And I have some research to do_, I remind myself of the predicament with the General. Weiss seems to consider my request for a moment before nodding and stepping aside. With a grin, I run from the evils of the hospital and take off towards the dorms, ignoring the stinging pain in my legs. As soon as I open the door, I find my hand grabbed by someone and pulled into the room.

"Woah, okay, what—?" I protest, feeling two sets of arms wrap around me.

"You're okay," Jade explains, worry evident in her tone, before tightening her embrace around my midsection. Aruna only hums an agreement, her arms around my neck coming close to suffocating me and her head in the crook of my neck. I can hear Ember giggling from behind them both as I relax and return the hug.

"Did you not expect me to make it?" I chuckle. "I've been through worse: You know that, Aruna, especially."

"Well, I heard you'd passed out. I was afraid that you might've overexerted yourself. You have a tendency to go overboard with the punchy-punchy." She sounds almost sentimental when she says it. I actually did have a habit of defending her back in Vacuo's primary combat school, even if she didn't necessarily need it.

"Well, I have a good teammate," I smile, looking at Ember. "Besides, the matter surrounding Team RWBY's investigation is more pressing. Also, me slowly losing oxygen from being strangled by both of you is also pressing. And the fact that I'm starving."

"Oh," Jade steps back, holding her hands close to her chest. Aruna relaxes, but takes a longer time letting go. The group starts to laugh, the sound of wind chimes accompanying Aruna's giggle and Ember's deep chuckle. The power of fear and tension relieved is an amazing thing.


	24. Chapter 24

"Glad to see you're out of the hospital," Cardin greets, leaning against the tree that I'm using as a backrest. "What's with all the diagrams and shit?"

"Trying to connect some dots into the vague image of an answer," I reply, flipping up through the binder to another page, the hastily-done recreation of Penny's memory HUD. The high level of mental pressure during that moment created a stronger definition of its pieces for me to use, but the edges are still blurry. There's no real answer to the Delta Initiative's intention or involvement—At least that I can see right now, so I close the binder and look back up to the armored man. "So what's up?"

"I convinced my team. We're all ready to learn to be better people," he pushes off of the tree to stand tall.

"Alrighty then," I bring myself up to my feet, readjusting the fingerless gloves on my hands. The scabs and scratches bother me just a little too much, and luckily Ember had a pair that she was able to cut up and resew into my size. "Step one is apologies: I want you and your team to formally apologize for all the shit you pulled in the first semester. Your first mistake was thinking that just trying to make a difference would be enough for other people to pick up on it. Everyone thinks you're trying to gain some trust so that you can turn it on them."

"I see," he glances down at his feet.

"First: That Jaune guy. Blackmail is almost worst than standard bullying. It's a mindgame, and it's horrible," I pick up my binder and store it in my backpack before walking down the hill, listening for the Winchester's armored footsteps. After a long pause, I hear the metal boots clashing against the grass. "I hope you realize that as much as this will help, it won't automatically give you a clean slate. Direct victims and associates of them tend to be pretty resilient to changing their minds. For instance: Aruna surely would've pounded Russell's face in if I didn't."

"Yeah. What's your relationship with that girl, anyway?" he moves up so that we're shoulder to much-higher-up shoulder.

"We met a bit over two years ago: Been friends ever since."

"So, like, _not_ dating?"

"Nah, she's too high up for me, anyway," I wave off the idea. It'd been a rumor once in the past, but we'd managed to squander it. For some reason I was naturally inclined to protect her and be around her, and her kind nature was so accepting, that it was easy for us to become as close as we are. Our almost opposing personalities seem to work well together, although lately she's been a bit more standoffish around Jade. "I wouldn't be worrying about that, though. I'd be focused on making up an apology for Jaune."

"Right, um…How do I do that?"

"Ugh, you high-class types," I shake my head, pinching the bridge of my nose. I follow him into the dorm building as he holds open the door. "Just tell him that you're sorry, and that you've decided you want to change for the better. If he doesn't believe you: Ren and I have a natural camaraderie."

"You do?"

"It's an Eastern thing. We stick together," I shrug. "Just make sure that he gives you a chance to make up for that blackmail nonsense. Forgiveness isn't really the goal here, yet."

"Yeah, fine. I don't even know how you know about that," Cardin grumbles.

"My semblance told me. Guy's got a lot of dark stuff hidden behind that smile." With that, I walk up to the JNPR dorm room and knock twice on the door, before pushing Cardin in front of the doorway and leaning against the wall. After a few moments, Pyrhha answers, a courteous smile on her face suddenly shattered into a hardened scowl. Cardin visibly flinches before hiding himself behind his own emotional shield.

"How can we help you, Cardin?" the redhead sighs, contempt clearly still evident as she tries to pull her face back into a semblance of neutrality.

"I wanted to talk to Jaune, actually," the armored man laughs nervously. I can hear the slightest sound of metal being bent and warped. Anger starts to roll off of the Champion as she takes a step back, barking in a mix of concern and anger, "Jaune, can you come to the door?"

"One second, Pyr," Jaune's voice echoes from the washroom before Jaune's countenance appears in the doorway, changing from his normal smile to one of barely-disguised fear as he plants his feet firmly into the ground. "Cardin."

"Jaune. Look, I know I've been an ass these past few months," Cardin begins.

"That's an understatement," the blonde casts his glance to the side.

"A-and I wanted to just say that I'm going to try and change: To become a real hunter," Cardin's panicking voice disappears as he utters the last phrase. "I thought it'd be good to start off with a formal apology so…I'm sorry for bullying you all of last semester. I'm not asking for forgiveness so much as just a chance to make things right."

"I…what?" Jaune raises his eyebrows in confusion.

"He's trying to make things right, okay?" I step in. "But we know it's a process. I figured that letting the key players know that he's at least going to start making an effort is the right thing to do. I heard that you all beat the crap out of him a while ago in a misunderstanding when he was trying to learn how to be courteous to a person in need. Maybe this'll just help…move things along—prevent that."

"What are you doing here? With him?" Pyrrha focuses her viridian eyes on me.

"He asked me for help before the end of the semester. I told him that a hunter doesn't real in revenge: That they deal in creating and protecting peace. Guess it struck a chord," I shrug. "No one else is bound to help, and I know he's at least genuine in wanting to change."

"How?"

"Semblance," I tap my temple. "It lets me know that you're angry right now…not that I'd need it to be able to tell at the moment. Just give him the benefit of the doubt, okay? It couldn't hurt to let him try."

"Fine," Pyrhha grumbles, "But this isn't over."

"I don't see a problem with it," Jaune interjects before his partner can slam the door shut. Everyone turns their attention to him. "What? If he really wants to change and make himself better, by all accounts let him. Besides, he has shadow-boy here backing him up."

"Shadow-boy?" I raise my eyebrow at him as one half of my mind registers the fact that Jaune's immediate acceptance of Cardin's apology has to do with his own insecurities. He had forged his way into Beacon in the first place, pushing himself to improve with his private training sessions with Pyrhha, in order to keep up appearances and become a real hunter. Cardin's current situation is similar, although more on a moral level than an ability one. "So, we're good here?"

"Yeah, we're good," Jaune smiles, his signature grin transmitting a generous nature.

"Awesome. Team RWBY's next by proxy, Cardin," I grab his shoulder armor and spin him around to face the other side of the hall and knock on the door. I turn briefly, waving goodbye to Pyrrha and Jaune as they close their own door. When I turn back to the RWBY dorm, I find myself needing to jump back in order to avoid the onslaught of four women with weapons drawn.


	25. Chapter 25

"Well, now that _that's_ over," I sit down on the bench next to Cardin, who still seems sore from getting brutally assaulted by Team RWBY. Last night was rough for the boy. This morning we'd continued the routine, which included Russell apologizing for his own shit, and Cardin speaking on the rest of his team's behalf in some instances. "We can move on to actually improving how you are as a person. Step one, I'd think, is controlling your anger."

"My anger?" Cardin glances at me from the corner of his eye as he takes another bite of his lunch.

"You have a temper, boy," I punch him in the shoulder, "Not that I can't relate. Living alone and in the dark for most of your childhood tends to do that to you."

"What?"

"You get angry easily," I put down my burger. "When you don't understand something, when you're in the middle of a fight, when you _lose_. It's understandable, but it's also controllable—with some practice. Like before? You almost backhanded that one faunus who wouldn't accept your apology. Didn't I tell you that that was to be expected?"

"It doesn't make it any easier," Cardin growls, balling his hands into fists before resuming his meal.

"Whatever. Trust me, violence only solves things if you're the victim, and you're only a victim to yourself."

"No, I was forced into this position by my life before Beacon. It's habit."

"Do tell," I chuckle at the armored man's sudden defensiveness.

"My dad was anti-faunus. It makes sense: The White Fang raided the company a lot for our products—We're a weapons corporation. He hated them so much, and I couldn't do anything but nod my head and agree. Besides, I'd always had some contempt for the faunus."

"Well, when the faunus appear to be better in every way to you, and then social status gives you a sudden advantage of them, you're sure to take power where you can get it," I remind him of the gleaned memories of his toddler/child life. "And then the cycle of hate started, right?"

"Sure, if that's what you wanted to call it. Some people were fine with me hating faunus, obviously, but there were also those who hated _me_. They would attack and bully me, so I fought back, and I learned to hate those people too. But it all comes back to the events surrounding the faunus."

"Fear…Interesting. You were scared of others, so you avoid them. I get it. I did the same thing before…," I cut myself off before I reveal anything to the large man beside me. "And I bet now you don't know any other way _but_ violence. It protects you."

"Something like that. So do you get it now? I am a product of environment: Not choice."

"False," I retort simply, turning around on the bench and pointing to the JNPR/RWBY table. "If you want a product of environment, look at Pyrhha, your ridiculous celebrity crush. That woman's been forced into training: Basic martial arts from three, and master at eight. Built her weapon at age ten. Fought grimm at age eleven. Fought people and began winning tournaments at age twelve. The perfect tactical fighter by sixteen, winning the Mistral Regional Tournament _again_, and being turned into a celebrity back at fourteen: On the box of a cereal brand. All of this started and continued because of her parents using her as a claim to fame to avoid being stuck in the humdrum of middle-class life. Her kind personality is a result of learning to match the façade her parents made her learn in front of the cameras, although she was surely like that before the training regimen started. Her constant smile? Similar to the Arc boy: A learned farce for the sake of others. Beacon was her escape, and it's only worked marginally."

"Wow, do a lot of research on her?" Cardin laughs, nudging my shoulder with a bit more force than expected.

"You'd be surprised on what you can learn when you start siphoning off people's memories. Plus, almost every magazine has _some_ information on her: Her memories only really filled in the more gruesome details: Like her overly strict parents, or her horrid loneliness up on her pedestal," I sigh. "Isolation hits us all, Cardin. How we choose do deal with it is what makes the difference."

"Is this supposed to be some sort of lesson?"

"I'm saying that if you want to change, you need to acknowledge that the isolation you feel might not have started because of you, but it _can_ end with you. You're taking the right steps, just make sure you commit. Have your team meet me in the training grounds tonight. I think some non-bullying based unity is needed there. You're all too individualistic and self-destructive in combat."

"Sure, whatever," Cardin waves me off as I stand, finishing up my food and tossing it in the trash.

/

"First rule!" I deliver a shadow-enhanced kick to Sky's face, sending him flying backwards and forcing him to drop his halberd. "Don't suck! Second rule?" I lunge at Russell, who parries my bayonet before trying a series of whirls and slashes with his knives at me. In response, I holster Noctus and collapse Sivir before closing the gap and knocking his weapons away at the wrist, hitting him in the head and protecting myself from the blow with a flare of aura. "Don't suck! Any guesses as to what the third rule is?"

I perform a back handspring in order to avoid a sword slash from Dove, continuing the tumble to dodge the projectiles from Cardin's mace in firing form. Once I lance, I brace myself for the pain of absorbing all of their frustration and anger and sending it to Team CRDL in a wave, knocking them all back as if absorbed into the crest of a high tide. I continue to bounce on the balls of my feet, circling the group as they slowly get back up.

"It's actually just to look cool while doing it. And keep your cool, too, while you're at it. So much anger from only four people. It almost feels like I could _live_ off of all that negativity. This is a practical lesson, boys: If you can't win together, then you can't win." After a pause, Cardin supports himself on his mace before looking at his team.

"Russell, get in close. Sky: aim for his legs, since he's so keep on using them. Dove, you're with me, we're going to try and relieve pressure on Russell when we can and beat this asshole's face in!" Cardin growls to his teammates, a grin growing on their faces as they finally get real orders from their leader.

"Get him!" Russell pumps one knife in the air before charging. Sky unleashes a battle cry as he runs forward as well, rolling to scoop up his halberd and continue, lunging at me with an upward slash to try and uproot me before flanking me. Cardin roars as he slams his mace into the ground, the normally launched fiery projectile contained into the weapon and creating a ground-pound effect, energy splashing in a line towards me. Russell jumps in the air seamlessly to avoid getting caught in the backlash as well, leading with a kick as Dove jabs from the side.

I retaliate with my own resources, timing my semblance activation during a lull of activity in order to start fighting back to the sudden teamwork from the group. I can't help but smile a bit, Cardin's orders helping to develop actual teamwork. I don't expect to win in this situation, but I surely can hold out a long time thanks to my semblance. The halls outside of the training grounds are filled with the sounds of yelling, screaming, explosions, and gunfire, as the shattered moon makes its journey across the clouded night sky.


	26. Chapter 26

"Jaune Arc and Kevin Nakamura," Professor Goodwitch announces as our profiles and names appear on the right-third of the stage.

"Interesting," I stand, picking Noctus up and strapping the rifle to my leg. On the opposite end of the classroom, Jade is facing off against one of the new students from Haven: Emerald, I think. The center arena is cleared for some reason. As I square off against Jaune, he draws his sheathe-shield and deploys it on his left arm, holding his sword behind him while still being pointed at me. I drum my right-hand fingers against Sivir's trigger handle, the tips of my fingers poking out from behind the shield as I do so.

"Hey, Jaune, I have an offer for you," I relax my stance as the light ticks down.

"What?"

"The Rose offered the same to me on the first day: I won't use my semblance, just to make things more fair. Good?"

"Oh, sure, Shadow-boy's going to come at me with only his _buzzsaw shield_ and stabby rifle," Jaune replies sarcastically, though with an amused smile. I click my tongue and shrug as the buzzer sounds, pointing Noctus at Jaune and extending the back end of the rifle's stock in order to be able to hold it outwards easily. Five shots ring out as Jaune holds his shield right in front of him to block the assault, running forward. Once he's in range, I collapse the end of the stock in order to have a more balanced "sword," extending the bayonet and changing my grip slightly, and flicking the weapon up to knock his sword away. I continue my momentum with a jab from Sivir, which collides with his own shield right before our other weapons get locked against each other.

"I also have a request," I lean into the deadlock, collapsing Sivir and gripping the thinner section of my rifle's stock to put more force into it. "I feel like you and Cardin actually have a lot in common, once you look past the whole bullying others part. Do you think you could help me out with his whole redemption thing?"

"I'll think about it," he replies sheepishly, struggling to put the words out while holding me at bay.

"Great!" I extend the stock of Noctus again, getting on one knee and pushing up with the back end of my weapon and smacking Jaune's chin with the butt of the rifle. I back up with a downward slash, nicking at his aura a second time. Based on the aura gauges, he has a lot more than average. If he uses it right, he could actually win against me easily by using the more offensive capabilities of it.

/

I still win, if only barely, having to face someone with at least three-times the amount of aura of a normal person. It must be part of being an Arc. The barriers separating the large rectangular arena into three small ones slide back into the wall as Goodwitch pits Pyrhha Nikos against the entirety of Team CRDL.

"Wow…good luck with that," Ember whistles as Cardin stands up.

"Thanks," he grumbles as he makes his way down the stairs.

"Remember: Communicate! A major part of combat is your awareness of everything around you and the situation," I remind him.

"Using my own advice as your own, huh?" Aruna leans over and whispers to me. "You don't exactly follow it, either."

"My specialty is rapid-reaction last-ditch efforts for victory. I don't think 'Beat the ever-living shit out of your bullies by throwing a locker door at them' is sound advice for his situation."

"It was pretty funny, though, the way that guy screamed before he fell down," Aruna chuckles at the memory. "You always did think of interesting ways to manipulate the environment."

"I kicked an emptied mag at Jaune's face as a distraction. That was _also_ pretty funny. Also, blowing up someone's dust-rapier, field-stripping a pistol and spreading the firing powder all over someone's torso before scraping my sword across it and blowing it up. I think I threw my shoe at someone at some point."

"Don't forget when you ripped off your hoodie and used it to bind someone's arms and flip them over," she suggests. I can't help but join in on her laughter as Jade finally returns from the locker rooms, washed up after her fight with Emerald. "Oh, they're starting!"

I look down at the arena, where CRDL is facing off against Pyrhha, her weapon drawn in spear form, in a similar—if not a shit-ton more refined than—style as Jaune. I forget sometimes that she trains with him and essentially built him from the ground up. He had only basic experience and the technical know-how from reading books when he arrived at Beacon. The battle ends after a bit of deliberation, Pyrhha using her more functional agility to avoid getting hit while slowly peppering each member into the red zone. Except for Cardin, she flat out knocks him into the air, catches him in a chokehold using her spear as a bar, and flips/slams him into the ground, causing a small wave of impact, before jumping back and recollecting her shield and returning to her original fighting stance.

"Fuck, that's scary," I mutter, noticing Jaune sitting in the open seat next to Aruna. I tap her shoulder so that we can switch places. "What's up, Arc?"

"You said that you want a group effort for Cardin's reform. What do you need?" he flashes his signature grin.

"First off, his anger issues. However he acts normally will be for naught if he snaps and goes back to his ways in a rampage. You saw how he was during that fight just now? Frustrated, he lost control of environmental awareness and being careful in combat, and brought the result of the fight that much sooner. Something tells me you have a bit of experience with channeling and at least hiding emotions very well."

"Wha—I, well."

"The rejection letter from your application to a primary combat school. You turned that into motivation, did you not?"

"H-how do you know about that?" he stutters before leaning in with a harsh whisper.

"My semblance, before it changed. It used to be able to glean memories of people. I saw the old sadness and frustration you felt at not making it in. Now, I don't have that luxury: my semblance nerfed itself, like a new video game ability or weapon that works amazingly during its initial level, but just becomes another piece of variety for the remainder of the game."

"Oh. Well, I guess you're right on the emotion part. Maybe we can get him to be less…aggressive. Hell we could get him a date to the dance!"

"Don't get ahead of yourself, there, buddy. He has someone he likes, sure, but she has her eyes on someone else."

"Oh. I can understand that feeling," he casts a sidelong glance at the Schnee a few rows down.

"Right. Well, we'll see if we can get him into some form of therapy for his automatic responses. They're not his fault, really, but he's still the one who's responsible for whether or not they continue."

"Yeah," Jaune sighs, the slightest wave of sadness appearing around him. He must be remembering his own circumstances before Beacon. As I glance back down to the arena, I notice Pyrhha is still on the floor, fighting off a grey-clad man: one of the other students from Haven. He launches himself away from her using his shotgun boots before…forfeiting…with almost all of his aura still there. Seems legit.


	27. Chapter 27

"I think I've had the snot beaten out of me enough this week," Cardin collapses on the ground in the middle of the grimm simulation arena. It'd been a gift from General Ironwood in regards to the upcoming Vytal Festival. Frankly, I think it's just a ludicrous show of the wealth and power at the fingertips of the Atlesian Military.

"Well, when you beat up the same ursa major over and over again for an hour, it's bound to dull your senses to actual combat," I shrug, leaning against the nearby wall. "What's with that, anyway? An ursa major in Forever Fall?"

"It's when Jaune took a stand against me. I think even he's better than I am at this point," Cardin grunts, pulling himself to his feet.

"Ooh, so _that's_ what all that was about during that trip," I snap my fingers in realization. "I caught the aftermath of that. Turns out that grimm bodies attract other grimm."

"Yeah, well…I have some general catching up to do. In _all_ my classes, not just Combat."

"There's always the weekend classes: Jade gets swamped by them, but it's worth it."

"Jade? The ghost girl that clings to you like a lost puppy?"

"And in turn I guess I cling to Aruna in the same sense," I shrug. "She's actually mostly independent when she wants to be. The firearms class is really killing her, though. She's been using knives for her entire life. And that one's a requirement. The other courses have weekend classes, too, if you just sign up. They're off this week, because of the dance, but you can start next week."

"I'll see about it," Cardin deflates at the mention of the dance.

"Oh, what's got you all frustrated now?" I roll my eyes.

"I'm still trying to be a good guy now, but everyone just blows me off. They'd rather run away and tough it out than accept my help."

"It'll come with _time_, Cardin, trust me. Even if they know that you _might_ be trying to be different, they're still wary of you. An entire semester of cruelty doesn't disappear with one good act. You can't change the past: Only make amends for it."

"And I'm _trying_, but I just get so angry about it! Now that I've stopped being a total ass, I have no power or respect that I had before. I'm useless!" he throws his hands up in the air before turning on the simulation again. Blue holograms of beowolves appear, and Cardin starts hacking at them with his mace while he talks. "And people seem to enjoy taking advantage of that."

"Explains the black eye, there," I point to my own respective eye as he continues to swing his mace with admittedly good precision and focus, using his momentum to his advantage without simply swinging the weight around. "Look, I'll keep saying this: It's understandable that people don't trust you—hell, many of them hate you. It'll take a while to build up a good reputation, especially starting from a bad one. I'm pretty sure having Jaune's and my seal of approval is one of the few things keeping you socially afloat."

"You always sound like you're speaking from some experience, there, Kev," Cardin stomps his armored boot onto the skullplate of another grimm.

"What if I told you that I used to be like you: Uncontrollable anger and frustration at a lack of approval. What would you say?"

"I doubt it. You're always so near-calm that it bothers me."

"Well, I was. Then, I met Aruna. She sort of helped me out, gave me a safe place to be. She also helped hypnotize me so that there are mental guards all around my brain preventing me from going into a rage. And when the popular new girl likes you? Well, everyone learns to at least tolerate you. Sure, a bunch of guys hated me for obvious reasons, but I felt a lot better. It was still a process, and that anger is still just beneath the surface, but I at least have it under control."

"So what I'm hearing is: You're actually being mind-controlled by that girl, and you're a slave to her every whim," Cardin chuckles, a jovial grin on his face.

"Hey, loyalty and slavery are two totally different things," I protest with a laugh.

/

"Hey, Kevin?" Aruna calls out while flipping through some of her history notes.

"What's up, Fireball?" I glance briefly at her before returning to the Grimm Studies essay.

"What are your plans for the dance?"

"Meaning?"

"Like, who are you going with, if anyone?"

"Well, I figured that I'd go with Jade, since we're partners and all," I shrug before continuing, "Plus, I doubt she'd feel comfortable going with anyone besides our team."

"Ah. So, I guess that puts an end to the days when it was always just us, huh?" Aruna sighs.

"Don't worry, we can still get ice cream after the dance," I roll my eyes, aware of the girl's sweet tooth and adherence to our old tradition of ice cream after any sort of victory (which includes surviving a school function).

"Yes," the redhead laughs in celebration. "I guess I gotta find my own date, then if you go with Jade."

"Oh you'll be fine, Miss Socialite," I quip. "You've been popular since you got here."

"A bunch of people seem to want to be _your_ friend," Aruna counters. "It's not like you aren't personable when you want to be."

"Pssh, they want to use me to get to my team," I wave it off. "The Voice buzzes in my head when someone has some ill intent, and I think my guess there is correct."

"Whatever. Maybe I'll just take Cardin out: Give him some brownie points to the others."

"You really think that that'll do shit?" I mean…he _does _have a thing for redheads," I shrug, a mocking version of a thinking face on my features.

"Oh, ew, come on," she shoves my shoulder. "I'd rather go alone. You should be worried about _Sun's_ date."

"Oh yeah…Blake," I suck in air through my teeth. "Either way, I was going to head to the library. Maybe I can try and convince Blake to go with Sun after that…horrid rejection earlier."

/

"Anyone sitting here?" I glance between Blake and the open desk beside the one she's sitting in. She glares at me before sighing.

"Not particularly."

"Good," I slide into the chair and put my scroll into the dock besides the monitor, bringing all my files on the General to life. "You know, it's unlikely that a single person shall ever reveal all the aspects of an event—regardless of how much time they waste poring over the same documents."

"And what is that supposed to mean?"

"It means that certain aspects are lost on an individual because he or she does not contain enough pieces to be able to fill in the gaps reasonably. We are only students, Blake. It is not our job to dismantle a criminal agenda all on our own."

"What is this 'we' you speak of," she grows agitated, her bow seemingly moving as she continues to glance through the documents on her own monitor.

"You're investigating the White Fang, and I'm investigating General Ironwood," I shrug. "I thought I made that clear the day I woke up in the hospital."

"Whatever."

"And since neither of us can possibly get the full picture without more information—none of which has presented itself to us at this moment—it stands to reason that an extra six hours reading about an incursion you already know everything about won't do jack shit. Go to the dance, Blake: If not for yourself, then for your team." With that, I get up, removing my scroll from its dock and tapping it against Blake's screen, sending a request for copies of the same information.

"What is this?" she looks up at me, her haggard amber eyes catching mine.

"I was in the Paladin brawl, too. I think I deserve a piece of the action," I walk off. To my surprise, I receive not one, but two emails on my way out of the library. One, from Blake. The second? Ozpin. "Shit."


	28. Chapter 28

"Um, Ozpin. What's up?" I greet awkwardly, stepping into the clocktower office as the elevator closes behind me.

"I've heard of a Cardin Winchester's recently sudden move for reform. Where in previous months all changes have been focused on his grades, his recent motions have been more external. I've also heard of you helping him," Ozpin calmly responds, his hands clasped under his chin. "I'm curious as to why."

"One less bully…or four, by extension…benefits the whole school, and so why wouldn't I?" I shrug.

"A man you once punched in the face during lunch," Ozpin recounts. "The mace wielder who made it through the system by being just above par, and has since improved only slightly."

"You could say that if I were not outfitted with custom weapons and found my semblance, I would be in a similar situation, no?"

"I let you in because you showed exceptional hand-to-hand combat, even without a weapon, and great battlefield ingenuity. You've shown it again and again during class, I believe. But if you are to help a man change himself for the better, it might help to have some knowledge beyond getting walls built around your head through hypnosis. I don't believe that Cardin would be so easily receptive to such treatments."

"Well, Aruna taught me some of the basics on learning to trust people, too, before that. I think the same information applies to learning to help people. Besides, Jaune is also helping me with Cardin's emotional state. He's more well-versed in emotional control."

"I approve, although you understand that I will be giving my own input as well. You are starting to wear yourself thin between all your activities, Mister Nakamura."

"I don't know what you mean."

"Your investigation into the General, your attempts to help your teammate, your new project in the Winchester boy, and training up your own pain tolerance in order to manage your semblance. It's a lot for a student."

"M-my investigation into…you know?"

"And I would be very interested in whatever you find," Ozpin continues, pressing an icon on his monitor. I hear my scroll go off in my pocket: A file share request, most likely.

"R-right. Is that all?"

"That will be all for now," the headmaster nods. With that, I return the nod, turning on my heel and leaving.

/

"The dance is tomorrow and you still don't know who you're going with?" Cardin questions beside me, his team behind us.

"Yeah, whatever. My team sticks together," I shrug. "I'm more worried about the fact that Team CFVY is being held up by their mission."

"Oh, right. Your faunus friend."

"She has a name you know: Velvet. What're your backstories, by the way?" I glance back at the rest of team CRDL. "I know Cardin has some miniature revenge plot in his head, but why did you guys used to be such asses?"

"Rebellion," Russell begins, "I came from a high-end family. I didn't want people to think I was only here because of that."

"I was roped into this, remember?" Dove pipes up.

"I was bullied, myself, and being the instigator means I don't become the victim," Sky shrugs before running a hand through his slicked back hair. At this point, even after a few days, people had started to just ignore team CRDL overall. They had some trust in Jaune and I's decision, but we weren't exactly super-popular or able to influence a lot of people into trusting CRDL in turn.

"Yeah, I get it. I came pretty close to doing that last thing," I recall. "I won't be able to hang out much, by the way: Ozpin told me to take it easy with all my own shit. He might drop in to offer his own advice, but I think I've left you all with a good enough base to start with, right?"

"Right," Cardin agrees. With that, I wave goodbye and go to answer the text from Sun.

/

"So, what're your plans for the dance?" Neptune glances at me as we roam the halls towards the area for the dance.

"Um, to go?" I shrug as we turn into the large double doors and enter the room.

"If _I_ don't get doilies, then _you_ don't get fog machines," Weiss' shrill voice reaches our ears, said person being up in Yang's face, finger pointed up at her chin.

"Dude, fog machines," I whisper, tapping Sun on the shoulder.

"Your dance is gonna have fog machines?" Neptune inquires to the girls in the room: Ruby seeming somewhat more elated at some of her new acquaintances being there, but still downtrodden overall. We walk up, Sun looking around at the expansive space.

"We were thinking about it," Weiss smiles up at the blue-haired nerd, wringing her hands in a nervous manner. Crush, much?

"That's pretty cool," he comments.

"So, you ladies excited dress-up?" Sun steps forward with mock double-pistol fingers. Ruby blows air through her lips in exasperation, following up with a "Yeah, right."

"Laugh all you want, _I'll_ be turning heads tomorrow night," Yang crosses her arms and smiles.

"As if you don't already," I roll my eyes.

"What are you three wearing?" Weiss turns and questions.

"Uhh, this?" Sun gestures to his current outfit: Open popped-collar shirt and all.

"Ignore him, for he knows not what he says," Neptune steps forward, one hand in front of Sun's face.

"Hey, I might have _moved_ to Mistral," Sun pushes Neptune out of the way, pointing a thumb up to himself. "But I grew up in Vacuo. It's not exactly a shirt and tie kind of place."

"Yeah, we noticed," Yang deadpans while I glance at my own body, covered by a button-down shirt.

"I'm pretty sure Vacuo is a shirt and tie kind of place, Sun, if you'd paid any attention," I quip.

"Oh, whatever, you have your fancy upper-middle class girlfriend who probably turned you into a fancy-pants," Sun waves me off.

"Excuse me?" I jerk a thumb at Neptune, the real fancy-pants in the room.

"So, is Blake still being all…Blakey?" Sun scratches the back of his head.

"Obviously," Weiss huffs.

"Guys, don't worry. Blake _will_ be at the dance tomorrow," Yang walks off.

"That solves one problem," I shrug as I turn and leave as well. "Two to go…I think." _Well, there's asking Jade to go, and then there's the Ironwood thing…Cardin isn't my problem anymore, I don't think, so yeah: Two to go._

_/_

_A/N _You might've noticed that I've mentioned Kevin and hypnosis twice in two chapters now. I'm trying to suggest that Kevin has an angry side (I mentioned mental barriers back in the Russell fight as well) that is contained by…something. As shown before, Kevin also had a little slip-up into a sort of anger while being questioned by Weiss, in regards to his semblance. With this all, I was trying to put out the possibility that "The Voice" in his head _is_ that angry version of him that Aruna helped lock away. If the Voice is making itself known, especially through his semblance, it might start affecting his actions: Like trying to uncover some mystery involving a military general where he might normally not care.


	29. Chapter 29

"Dude, at least wear the tie," I toss the strip of cloth at Sun after he comes out of the bathroom with his dance attire on. Said attire consisting of a black shirt with half the buttons done instead of the usual white, and a less-ripped and darker wash pair of jean-shorts. Seems legit.

"Kev, it's so _restricting_, though!" the blond argues as Neptune and I continue the killing spree for our team in the first-person shooter game on the TV.

"Sun, Neptune and I are in our full suits, and Neptune doesn't even have a date! Nerd," I elbow the blue-haired "intellectual" as I press down on the firing button on the controller.

"Says the guy who's technically taking his entire team. Hard to beat that," Neptune shrugs, although there's a visible air of shadows around him. It's clear that he's somewhat nervous about the dance, although for what I don't know.

"Hey, we're going as a group. I don't see anything wrong with it."

"Should we go get them, by the way?"

"Oh, yeah, right, the dance starts in a little under ten minutes, doesn't it? Let's finish this and go," I continue to focus on the game for the last three minutes of the team-deathmatch timer.

/

"Woah," I can't help but stare for a brief moment as the girls open the door to the dorm. Ember stands there confidently in a black and silver strapless dress, with a corset making up the torso and a flowing ankle-length skirt with minute floral embroidery across it. Aruna's in a dress I'd seen before: A simple red number with two straps reaching up and crossing each other behind her neck, continuing that X pattern down to her mid-lower back and leading into the knee-length skirt. Jade is in a purple dress with long sleeves, ending a little bit above the knee and giving way to black stockings. Everyone is beautiful, admittedly, individually, but together it's almost intimidating.

"Ready?" Aruna walks past me, putting a hand on my shoulder.

"Y-yeah," I hold out my arm to Jade, who takes it in her own.

"Dance party!" Ember pumps her fist in the air.

"Woo!" Sun mimics the action as we travel down to the dance hall.

/

I can't help but feel a few men's (and women's) stares as Team BYRN walks into the dance hall. Neptune had gone in before us, as Ember had insisted on taking a few pictures of us four, and Sun had stayed behind to "figure his tie out." A.K.A. brood a little bit on Blake not being there with him. So in the end it was just one guy walking in with three girls, which was bound to garner attention (not that Ember and Aruna wouldn't gather attention on their own).

The dance itself was well set-up, considering the clashing styles of the two designers. A mix of DJs, large speakers, streamers, balloons, and flowery centerpieces showed both women's personal tastes, and made for a somehow balanced setup. Team CRDL isn't at the dance, mainly out of spite for most of the people that _are_ here. Most of the time we all hang out together, interacting with other groups, and me pulling Jade aside every once in a while so that she could recharge her social batteries.

That is until I find a thin trail of shadows leading out to one of the balconies. Curious, I follow it, cautious to not bump into anyone in my tunnel vision of the trail. There's Jaune, and Pyrhha, talking to each other. Rather, it sounds more like Pyrhha attempting a confession, after Jaune realized that Pyrhha had come to the dance alone. Expected, to an extent, that no one would dare ask the teen celebrity. As she leaves the balcony, I wave my hand in front of her to get her attention.

"Kevin. How are you?" she greets, building up her professional façade again.

"I saw all that just now," I roll my eyes. The Champion visible drops her wall of pleasantries, shoulders slumping slightly.

"Then you get it, right?"

"Yeah. Aruna was viewed in the same way for some time, but that's not why I pulled you over here."

"If this is about Cardin, I think I can understand your position on the subject now. Jaune talked to me about it."

"Oh, good. But no, I was referring to a certain Rose stuck at the punch bowl all by herself over there," I jerk my thumb at the refreshments stand. "Even if you don't have the one you want, you still have friends. It's good to remind yourself of that, and she looks like she could use some reminding, too."

"You remind me a lot of Jaune, sometimes. Or maybe a school counselor," Pyrhha laughs.

"Well, I've been around enough of them," I shrug. "It's one dance: I'm sure once Jaune realizes that Weiss can't possibly be in a well-off relationship until she takes down that wall of learned isolation, that he might really see you."

"Thanks, Kevin. But what do you know about Weiss, anyway?"

"I know that she has a crush on Neptune, that she's cruel to others, but I also know the general reasoning behind it, beyond the whole status stigma surrounding her," I list off the basics on my fingers. "But, it's not really my place to tell you until she comes to you herself about it. Now cheer up, go talk to Ruby."

"Right," Pyrhha brings up her smile again as she goes to the girl struggling to stand on her high heels. Strangely enough, the buzzing of negativity in my head doesn't stop after she leaves. Meaning that she wasn't the source of it, or at least not the major one. Neptune leaves the same balcony that PYrhha was just on, seeming somewhat content and more carefree than earlier. That shadow trail is still there.

_Jaune?_ I turn and walk onto the balcony myself. Jaune has his elbows leaning on the railing, head slumped over and giving a sigh. "And here's your third conversation on this balcony in the past few minutes, Jaune."

"What? Oh, hi," he turns around with a wave. The shadows are now evident around his body, despite his smile. That plastered-on grin. I'm surprised that neither he nor Pyrhha were able to discern that each others' countenances were learned facades, considering their practices maintaining their own.

"Rough night?" I walk over and lean on the balcony myself.

"I just sent some guy after my crush," he lets out a long breath from his mouth.

"Well, if it makes her happy, right?" I take a sip of my drink.

"Something like that. What about you? How's your night?"

"I have received many evil glares on the fact that I technically brought three girls to the dance," I announce to him. "Although I've been getting similar looks in all my time at Beacon for being on the same team with them."

"Ah. I just…don't know what to do."

"About Weiss?"

"Yeah."

"Just don't worry about it too much. A girl like her needs to be brought out of her shell with a chisel, not a hammer. Better yet, let her get there on her own time. Of course, you can always confess how you really feel about her, but her reception isn't likely to be good at this moment. After all, you just sent 'cool guy Neptune' after her."

"I guess. How do you do it?"

"Do what?"

"Just stay…so calm about everything? I mean how do you know all of this stuff and be able to woo girls and all that."

"I'm able to stay calm because I know myself very well. Confidence in _yourself_ is what matters. Being able to acknowledge your flaws and take it in stride, to own up to your mistakes, to know your strengths, is real confidence, not that overbearing arrogance that I've seen you practice. I believe you need to own up to one of those mistakes tonight, right?" I gesture to Pyrhha, listening intently to Ruby's words before the shorter girl walks off to the overhanging area above the room, where her sister is observing the crowd.

"Right."

"So what are you gonna do, Jaune?"

"Well, I—," he starts before I hold up a hand to cut him off.

"It was rhetorical. Just do it," I give him a curt nod before leaving the balcony. The shadows around him seem less present. I return to my team, and we continue to dance and talk through the night, until an interrupting cacophony of laughter garners our attention. There, walking up to Pyrhha, is Jaune, in a pale blue dress. _So that was his plan?_

"A promise is a promise," Jaune shrugs nervously at the Champion.

_Oh, I get it now. One of those_. I subtly raise my glass in his direction from behind Pyrhha, sending my approval. Pyrhha takes Jaune's hand after he offers it and he pulls her onto the dance floor, quickly accompanied by Lie Ren and Nora, the other members of his team, as they pull out some ridiculous choreography together, the DJ conveniently having raised the music up and chosen a new song a few seconds ago.

"Come on," Aruna grabs my wrist and pulls me onto the dance floor as well, inadvertently dragging Jade out as well. Ember, of course, is already out here. We all dance the night away, most of the shadows in the room having cleared up at the sudden high energy brought on by the Arc boy. Out of the corner of my eye, I notice Weiss and Neptune sitting side by side, making small talk. He'd really solved things for his friends, huh?


	30. Chapter 30

"They were here. Ozpin they were here!" General Ironwood shouts at the headmaster, sitting in his desk.

"We are very much aware of that. Thanks you James," Glynda responds.

"Fantastic, you're 'aware,' now are we going to do something about it, or are we going to stay the course and ignore what's right on front of us?" Ironwood raises his voice yet again. Last night, Ruby, having been alone at the dance, noticed someone across the way sneaking into the CCT and ran off to investigate. At least, that's the base information I'd gotten from Team RWBY this morning. A beeping noise precedes Ozpin calmly telling someone to "come in." Expectedly, it's Ruby, the only other witness to…whatever happened yesterday. Her words are out of my reach for a bit until she steps closer to the clocktower window.

"Thank you for coming, Ruby. How are you feeling?" Ozpin greets.

"Okay, I guess," the younger girl responds. "I'd feel a lot better if my bad-guy catching record wasn't zero for three." There's a pause. "Okay, so that's the tone we're going with, got it." She remarks this nervously.

"Ruby, I want you to know that your actions last night were very brave, and exactly how a huntress should be. You recognized a threat, you took action, and you did the very best you could," Ironwood tells her.

"Thank you sir," she replies.

"Ruby, the General here has already informed us of the events that transpired last night, but now that you've rested we were wondering if there was anything you'd like to add," Ozpin explains.

"Was there anyone else with her? Did she look familiar to you in any way?" Glynda suggests.

"I…I don't know. She was wearing a mask. She never said anything. She fought with glass, but I don't think that was her semblance. Her clothing lit up every time she attacked," Ruby recounts.

"Save for the glass…that sounds like the woman I fought the night we met Ruby," Glynda surmises.

"Imbedding dust into clothing is an age-old technique. It could be anybody," Ironwood laments.

"You think this could be related to Torchwick and the White Fang?" Ruby wonders.

"It's possible, but we lack the required evidence to link the two," Ozpin informs.

"Actually, I think I remember her saying something about a hideout or something…in the southeast: Just outside of the kingdom," Ruby adds. Suspicious that she wouldn't have brought this up earlier at all. Saying nothing is different than mentioning a hideout…and to whom did she mention it to? Seems pretty unlikely that one would blurt out where they were hiding at random to the enemy.

"I thought you said that she didn't say anything—," Glynda voices my concern before being cut off by Ozpin.

"Thank you, Ruby. You may go, spend some time with your team, get some rest for these coming days," he tells her.

"You got it, sir!" Ruby responds.

"Oh, and Ruby. Please try to be…discreet, about this matter."

"Yes, sir."

"Well there we have it," Ironwood comes dangerously close to the clocktower window after a pause. "We send as many troops as we can to the southeast. Find out exactly what's going on, and eradicate anything that gets in our way."

"Why must your answer to everything involve a triumphant display of military bravado?" Goodwitch snaps. "You treat every situation as if it's a contest of measuring d—." Once again, the stern professor is cut off by the sound of Ozpin.

"Glynda," he warns. I struggle to not make a sound as pain continues to tear at my body. Clinging to the outside of a clocktower using only my semblance is difficult work, especially against the winds and the need to remain out of sight while still being able to hear through the window.

"Well he does," The teacher responds, eager to get the last word in.

"She's right," the headmaster continues. "As much as I, too, would like to end this situation once and for all, we have to keep in mind that this might go beyond Vale…beyond Beacon. And if this truly is some part of a master plan for which we don't know the final move: We mustn't be so bold, lest we risk a panic."

"I have served you faithfully for years," Ironwood's voice comes with a shudder of contained anger, "But if you're telling me your plan is to simply hold the defenses and _wait—_."

"It is _not_," Ozpin counters, cutting Ironwood off. He seems to be really good at that, huh? The sound of a scraping chair indicates to me that he must've been previously sitting, only to stand up now. "You're a general, James, so tell me: When you prepare to go to war, do you first send the flag-bearers, or the scouts?"

The conversation seems to have ended, and just in time, too. My vision had started to blacken from the pain wracking my body. Releasing my semblance, the shadows holding my to the outside wall of the clocktower disappear, dropping me towards the earth. Sliding Noctus from its holster on my upper-leg armor, I grab the stock end like a sort of icepick, deploying the small knife hidden in the bottom end of the weapon so that it really does become a pick. I send my aura over the sharp steel and slam it against the side of the tower, turning what would be a sharp gash into the metal into a gentle crease that slows my descent as much as possible before the tower's design turns inwards, leaving nothing to grab on to.

As I descend in free fall now, I put Noctus on my leg and deploy Sivir, flipping numerous times through the air before flaring my aura and slamming into the roof, being cushioned from too many problems by the purple manifestation of my soul. _The southeast, huh? Ironwood seems eager to blow it sky-high. I wonder if he's hiding something. _

"Uh, Kevin?" a familiar voice pulls my attention back to my surroundings. Jaune.

"Oh, hey there," I wave, trying to give the appearance of nonchalantness and failing…being in the center of a small crater in the sidewalk tends to strip you of the ability to claim that nothing's up. "So…mission day."

"Seems you're already off on your own mission," Jaune glances up and notices the clocktower being the closest structure capable of dropping me into a crater.

"Can't say that I wasn't curious about what happened last night. I got a basic idea, but I'm still going to ask Ruby for a sketch. Someone who can invade _Beacon_ of all places? I'd like to know if it was all skill…or something already set in motion."

"Right: Because some could totally infiltrate Beacon with no…problem," Jaune realizes his mistake.

"Exactly. During the Vytal Festival, it's easily possible, with all the people coming to Beacon for the purpose of competing in the tournament." Both of us look up as a nearby speaker relays a message from Goodwitch.

"Will all first-year students please report to the ampitheater."

"Let's go," I turn and start walking, still shaking off the phantom pains of holding myself against the outside of the clock tower for so long using my semblance.


	31. Chapter 31

After Ozpin's speech regarding the Great War and the generations afterwards, a bunch of screens appear around the edges of the amphitheater, marked with a bunch of missions.

"Grimm extermination for us, obviously," Aruna glances over her shoulder at us before sauntering over to one of the boards.

"Just make sure that you keep that lighter on you. Kind of important now that Ember has her blade instead of a flaming drill thing," I remind the team leader.

"Now why would I ever forget your old birthday present to me?" she brings her hand up, flipping the lighter in the air before returning it to her pocket. "There: Grimm extermination."

"My favorite," Ember smacks her fists together. "Should be easy for us."

"Done," Aruna opens up her scroll as the full details get uploaded to it from the terminal. "Turns out that the hunter we're shadowing is actually a huntress: Peach."

"The botany teacher?" Jade inquires.

"And apparently a scientist of equal caliber to Oobleck: Some refer to her as an alchemist."

"Interesting," I remark. "Hopefully the chemical mage will be a blessing in this hunt."

/

"Holy fuck why!?" I send the negative energy that I'd collected back at the grimm in a shockwave, seemingly impaling them as well as pushing them back. "Recharging!" I jump back as I try to shake my pain back to normal, hiding behind my shield and shooting sparingly with Noctus.

"Recharging!" Jade leaps back from within the horde again, landing beside me and counting out ten seconds of recharge time on her semblance.

"There must be a nest nearby!" Professor Peach concludes as she throws another grenade into the fray, on the opposite side that Jade was working on. "We'll need to eradicate it so that more hordes don't plague this area!"

"You heard the professor," Aruna pours more fire from her lighter, commanding it with her opposite hand. Luckily, the grimm seem wary of the flames, and go down easier with all that distraction. Ember's machine gun seems to make quick work at the grimm, drilling through their boneplates within a few shots before destroying their brains and tearing their bodies apart. Once the horde is thinned out enough, Peach gives another order.

"I can hold the line myself for a while. You four hunt down that nest!" Peach takes out her trident, electricity whirling around its tip.

"Let's go!" Aruna puts her lighter away and grabs her tomahawks, running off to where we thought we'd seen the grimm originate from. All of us follow, keeping a moderate pace to conserve energy and to keep Ember nearby. Toting a giant machine gun takes a lot of pressure and weight. The sound of grimm…dying…pulls our attention to the right, and we take a renewed sprint in that direction, only to stop at the immediate sound of a grimm being stabbed in the throat. We stop at the edge of a clearing, seeing a woman in blue clothing, covered in light pale armor, remove a spear from an ursa's head.

She's wearing a grimm mask—not like the White Fang, but a more stylized and heavy one, covering her entire face in layers of bone and giving her the appearance of a demon. Her blonde hair, with a singular blue streak, is what catches my attention.

"Hex?" I step out into the clearing, Sivir still deployed on my right arm and Noctus in my hand. The woman turns sharply, drawing her spear back to attack, before visibly relaxing. She takes a step back before removing her headpiece, revealing exactly who I expected…yet didn't really hope for.

"Kevin…fancy seeing you here?" she shrugs, scratching the back of her head.

"You…died. That fire at the school," I take a step back, gripping my rifle hard.

"What can I say? I was blessed with an opportunity: The Black Queen attacked the CCT. That will not stand."

"Wait, who _are_ you?" Aruna steps in, waving her hands around to get Hex's attention.

"Hexanne Winters, undead extraordinaire," she jokes, holding a peace sign up to one of her azure eyes. "Kevin's ex…technically."

"Yeah, thanks for not shooting me a message or anything about you rise from the grave," I roll my eyes, attempting to use sarcasm to stem the tide of tears trying to ride up from within me.

"You had a girlfriend?" Aruna glances at me. I give a low whistle and turn away.

"I heard of a young man who ran into a shop mid-robbery and totally shat on the offenders barehanded," Hex walks forward, head cocked to the side. "On the anniversary of that fire. Was that you?"

"Maybe," I avert my eyes from the woman, my knees starting to feel weak. She's eighteen by now, if I remember right—a little bit under a year older than myself.

"Well, it's good to know that I picked such an upstanding citizen," she shrugs, stepping back again. "We stand in a strange time right now, Kevin, although I'm sure you've already discovered that. I hope that we can rely on you in the future." With that, she turns and walks away into the forest. "Oh, and Kevin? I really did miss you all these years. I'm sorry that I can't stay longer, but I'm needed elsewhere at the moment. The nest is that way, by the way."

She points off to the right of her as she disappears into the forest. I glance down at the forest floor, aware of the copious amounts of shadow surrounding myself. My ex-girlfriend? Perfectly alive and capable of slaying grimm? And I didn't know about it for four years?

"Could all of you just…leave me alone for a few minutes?" I growl out, my voice shaking.

"Kevin," Jade starts.

"Now!?" I stomp my foot. Aruna puts her hand on Jade's shoulder and they all turn and go towards the direction Hex pointed out. Once I'm sure they're far enough away, I collapse to my knees, intense anger wracking my body as my semblance absorbs my own hatred and shrouding me in a fog of swirling darkness. When I wake up, there's almost nothing in the immediate area around me but destruction. Trees leveled and ground pounded into desolation. I pull myself to my feet, glancing around at all the destroyed land and the light ring of grimm at the edge of it all. They seem somewhat wary, but scatter when a tomahawk slams into one of their heads.

"Are we…good, Kevin?" Aruna runs up to me, throwing one of my arms around her shoulder to support me.

"She's alive," I mutter aimlessly. "And all she had to say was some vague nonsense."

"She mentioned a Black Queen. Any ideas?" Aruna wonders as we make our way back to Professor Peach, Jade and Ember on high alert for the both of us.

"None at the moment. Team RWBY might have one after their return. How did the nest go?"

"It was inside a stone structure, so I had no qualms about lighting it ablaze. The fire shouldn't spread."

"Good. Let's get going."

/

A/N Ooh, Kevin had an older girlfriend? And there was a fire? Past events that I'll probably never mention again? And his semblance exploded? Dun dun dunnn…..


	32. Chapter 32

"W-what happened?" Peach glances at our returning team, throwing her medium-brown hair over her shoulder before running over to us.

"Well, the grimm nest is gone," Ember shrugs. "Kevin had a little bit of a problem, but I think he'll be fine."

"You look horrible," the teacher comments, holding the back of her hand to my forehead.

"I'm fine," I grumble.

"His mind should return to normal after a day or two," Aruna explains.

"I'm fine, Aruna," I glance up at her, trying to ignore the splitting headaches running through my mind.

"Kevin," Aruna goes wide-eyed for a second.

"Let's finish off the remaining grimm and return to the village," Peach orders. "Jade, take your partner there now." The assassin nods before changing places with Aruna and heading towards the nearby village. After a brief inspection of my health, we return to Beacon, I pass out in my dorm room. The next day, Aruna hangs out with me while Jade and Ember go out to do something or another.

/

"Your eye color, Kevin," Aruna sits at the foot of her bed, while I'm sitting right next to her. "It changed into your old color for a second back in the forest."

"It did?" I glance from her to the space in between us. "That means that…"

"Your mental barriers fell for a second, there. Must be from the sudden shock, and the blast from the past."

"Hopefully that's all there is to it," I shrug, falling onto my back with a sigh. "Oh, I hate not knowing."

"I'm aware," the redhead moves to where my head is, gently picking up my body so that she can place my head in her lap. She runs one hand through my hair while keeping the other one on my chest. I'd be lying if I didn't admit that I leaned my head into her gentle touch. "You always calm down when I do this."

"It just…feels good?" I stretch, looking up at my old friend. "I don't know how you put up with me."

"Well, you've always been pretty loyal, and a great friend. I have no problem doing my best to comfort you when you need it," she consoles, rubbing my hair in between her fingers.

"Thanks, Aruna," I sigh in contentment, closing my eyes. My original dark-brown irises had changed into their deep purple state after Aruna and some others locked my anger for me. A crack in my eye color signifies a change in my soul, in a sense, back to the old me. I'd learned to ignore most of my past in order to keep the barrier solid, but seeing Hex like that really brought up a well of memories.

"Hey, don't worry about her," Aruna seems to sense my mood. "Think about it this way: Our team finished our mission so much earlier than the others. We have all the free time in the world."

"Right," I stifle a yawn, noticing Aruna putting her free hand on top of mine. "I think I'm just gonna…" With that, I slip into unconsciousness.

/

…And am awoken by the sudden slamming of someone's knees into the area of bed right next to my head. Startled, I flail helplessly before falling off of the bed to the sound of a certain redhead's giggles. "Wow, our powerful shadow warrior: Defeated by a mattress and gravity."

"Shut up," I groan, pulling myself to my feet and rubbing the back of my head. "Where were you the past…" I grab her alarm clock and check the time. "Three hours?"

"The forge," she holds up her arms, revealing a new set of bronze arm bracers, with a thin set of mechanics on the inner-arm. The end of the bracer near her wrist has a visible small cylinder poking out. I notice a familiar set of mechanics surrounding her wrist: The same thing as my shield.

"New tech?" I gently take hold of her arm, glancing over the bracer.

"Set of non-manual lighters," Aruna explains. "It's not always easy to fumble around for your lighter—no offense."

"None taken, they look stunning," I lift her arm and tap on the device. "Jade help you out?"

"Of course," Aruna rolls her eyes, "I don't understand mechanics as well as those two do."

"Where are they, anyway?" I let go off her arm and sit down next to her.

"Bringing lunch. They should be here, soon."

"Dinner is served, my comrades!" Ember's booming voice comes from the hallway door, accompanying the sound of it opening.

"Alright!" I chuckle in celebration, coming out into the common area. Aruna joins me momentarily, and we gather around two of the desks in order to have a mock-feast for our mission victory. Truthfully, the mission Coco put us on was a bit tougher: Colossus-class grimm tend to be more difficult than a large mob…albeit a _really_ large one in this case. After that, we all relax for a few hours before the sound of sirens snaps us into a combat state.

"Oh shit," I quip, running to the window and noticing the slightest wisp of smoke from crumbling debris arising from downtown Vale.

"That…doesn't look good," Ember remarks.

"We're going down there," Aruna taps my shoulder as she turns and runs into the girls' partition of the room.

"Strap in: Team JNPR's ship is getting on an airship in a few minutes, and I'd like to be on it," I send a message to Jaune to hold up for a little bit. Within those few minutes, we're all out in our battle gear and running down from the school to the airship that's docked with Team JNPR waiting inside.

"Ready for some fun?" Nora smacks her fists together as we join her team on the ship.

"Let's go see what's going on down in Vale," Aruna rolls her eyes as the ship lifts off the ground. Once we're close enough, I notice the swarms of black fur and white boneplates of grimm scouring the city and wreaking havoc. There's a lot of them: including a small army of higher-class grimm as well.

"Oh hell. JNPR, we're dropping down there! Now!" Jaune runs up to the edge of the open airship door. Nora launches herself easily using Magnihild , standing with a salute as she soars towards the visible rising King Taijitu head. Ren and Pyrhha jump out on their own, flipping through the air to slow their descents. I notice a flash of blonde that marks that Pyrhha grabbed Jaune on her way out.

"Hey, so, we don't have the same mobility that they do: Can we get a little bit closer?" Aruna calls to the pilot. A gruff nod precedes the ship's movements towards the larger congregations of grimm, where no high-class ones are visible to disrupt us in any way.

"Fire in the hole!" Ember runs and jumps out of the ship, the rest of us following closely behind. I start to absorb the negative energies flying off of all the civilians and grimm during my descent while Jade activates her semblance. The assassin disappears into the street right before I land with a massive thud, a wave of shadow energy flying over the grimm as I slam my shield into the ground. With the immediate area cleared, Aruna has no problem landing before running into combat, tomahawks drawn. Ember stalks forward in the opposite direction, Shredder firing bullets at maximum speed into the grimm.

Jade appears, flying out of the ground from the middle of the grimm and spinning her blades around. More and more energy swirls around me, being absorbed into my system as pain and intense anger start to wrack my body. The grimm seem attracted to the lone immobile target, and try to get at me while I kneel with my shield imbedded into the floor, but the other three members of my team seem perfectly able to keep the hordes at bay long enough for me to gather as much negative energy as I can.

"Aruna," I growl, ripping my shield from the street. The redhead is dancing in a tornado of fire: proof that her new bracers seem to be working well.

"Right," she suddenly switches from defense into offense, slamming her feet into the heads of grimm as she jumps around, running away from me while slicing up the grimm in her path. Jade does the same, as Ember decapitates a large ursa with her arm blade and hides behind it. The second I know everyone is clear, I unleash a shockwave from myself, all the grimm previously closing in on me suddenly impaled by spiked waves of shadow before the dense smoke solidifies into my spiked knight's armor. At full capacity for shadow energy, I launch a flurry of discs from Sivir before running headlong into the fray.

/

A/N yeah, this seems rushed but I also don't want to write out another entire grimm fight scene thing: especially taking into account 16+ more people. Next thing is the final chapter for this section! And is probably just aftermath-y crap to line up with the end of Season 2.


	33. Chapter 33

A/N This is the section finale of the BYRN "saga," and is more or less just aftermath. Please either follow this story or me (can you do that? Idk) in order to keep updated on when the second section starts

After Professor Goodwitch uses her abilities to seal the hole in the ground, the deaths of the remaining grimm come fast. The combined efforts of teams JNPR, BYRN, CFVY, RWBY, as well as the professors, and the three-man team from Haven, _and_ the giant mechanized Atlesian army, the event known as "The Breach" ends on a generally good note.

Two of those people from Haven: Mercury and Emerald, hand Roman over to one of the Knights before joining the congregation of students and teachers next to one of the Atlas ships. More of them continue to circle the airspace, ensuring safety during this recovery period. A few yards away, team BYRN, Yang, and Velvet are getting our final checkups with the medics.

And by this I mean an almost-passed out Yang, and a doubled-over-in-pain-and-exhaustion me. The use of my semblance at that level had left trailing scratches across my arms, but luckily it's only superficial. Yang had taken a beating before the Breach, and without the relief efforts of BYRN and CFVY, she might've passed out mid-fight. Of course, none of team RWBY seems willing to talk about what led them to end up back in Vale, but no one really cares: We're alive!

Still, the Breach puts RWBY's investigation into the land of the public eye. Beacon and Vale might not be as safe as previously thought, but with the Vytal Festival around the corner, and most of the students on missions returning within the week, there's no cause for alarm. The new generation of Atlas military has proven itself as well. Once we're released, my team goes up to the dorm, almost all of us taking a nap right away. I say almost, because a certain brunette knocks on my partition door at some point during the night.

"Jade?" I wipe the grogginess from my eyes while glancing down at her, leaning against the doorframe. "What's up?"

"I…can't sleep. C-can I stay with you tonight?" she looks up with a pleading expression.

"Nightmares?" I raise an eyebrow. She nods, so I step out of the way so that she can come in. I gesture to the mattress as an open invitation, sliding myself back under the covers and moving so that I'm as close to the wall as possible, leaving a good two-thirds of the mattress for Jade.

At least, that was the plan, before she rolls over, one arm reaching up and wrapping around my neck while she plants her head on my shoulder. I sigh in somewhat annoyance, taking my arm that's stuck under her body and patting her on the back. I have to admit, it does feel comfortable having her there.

"It's gonna be okay, Jade. We're hunters: Nothing can stop us."

"Yeah," she doesn't sound so sure as she pulls herself closer.

/

"Hex?" I scowl at the blue-clad woman in front of me as she removes her large grimm mask, revealing her blue eyes, tinged with concern and purpose.

"Kevin. The Breach: Vale isn't safe anymore. Promise me that you'll look into it. I _know_ that you can do this," she steps forward, placing a tentative hand on my shoulder. I look up to the fountain statue behind her: The same one in front of the Beacon grounds. "Promise me."

"I promise nothing to you, Winters. When war comes, I will answer the call, but there is nothing else I can do until then."

"If that is what you believe," she steps back, solemn. "Good luck with the Vytal tournament. I'll be watching."

"Whatever," I turn and walk away, the land around me suddenly melting from a Beacon night scene into a pure white landscape.

/

A/N (Please read)

SO….this is the end of my "Section One." Or whatever. Section two will focus more on the actual speculation into how I imagine the rest of the year might go at Beacon. For the sake of my sanity (I do _not_ want to have to look at any singular story over 50 chapters long), Section Two will be given its own story thing (A separate title/Doc).

Team BYRN: The Veil is sort of a setup, showing all the ambiguity around Beacon at the moment, with no real answers. It was also supposed to show a rise from Kevin-the-sarcastic-guy-with-a-lot-of-dark-shit to Kevin-the-okay-guy-who-wants-to-help-someone-_other_-than-Aruna-for-once and being happy. Kevin becomes roped into the Torchwick shit, and becomes somewhat obsessive on the topic, natural paranoia setting in again, but he's still able to put it off in order to do what he does.

Team BYRN: Return to Darkness is the next section. This will focus more on an impending war (since RWBY the show seems to be drifting towards that), and the efforts of the students against this.

A quick summary of the general idea of this section (ignoring reveals, doing this chronologically): Some of the ideas in here are not present in the story because I forgot or had no idea how to really write it in.

A student, Kevin, had a friend in Sun Wukong in Vacuo. After Sun left for Mistral for school, Kevin resumed normal life, even attaining a girlfriend despite the roughness of being borderline-homeless and bullied at school some. There was a fire when Kevin was 13-14ish, which presumably killed his girlfriend, Hexanne. After a year of grief and anger (the fire being started by some other kids from the school), Kevin takes it out on a pair of robbers at a nearby convenience store, saving the owner barehanded. Interactions with the police after this placed him in primary combat school (A normally 4-year program that one applies to be in at 12 and joins at 13). Kevin joins two years late as a result, and the rage that consumed him continues to live on.

He meets Aruna, a nice socialite, who makes friends with him. In order to curb his anger, with permission from teachers, Aruna locks his anger behind a mental wall. Kevin and Aruna develop a strong camaraderie, him coming to live at her new house after an accident left her dad without a wife or the unborn child meant to come. Time goes on and Kevin goes to Beacon: Without a weapon, due to the year-based restrictions on access to the forge at the Vacuo academy. He appears as a somewhat well-prepared guy, despite his lack of a weapon, with strong ingenuity and instinct at his side.

His team at Beacon creates a sense of family for him, as well as his fighting partner: Jade. She is an ex-assassin who is trying to live a life as a huntress after realizing what she was doing. The Team builds up both of these people into more stable individuals. Along with Ember, they all live normal Beacon lives, becoming happier over time and forgetting about their pasts. Kevin gets his weapons after Jade forges some for him, and he unlocks his semblance during class. Kevin meets with Sun again.

At some point, Kevin runs into RWBY's antics, getting absorbed into the fight with the Paladin, as well as meeting Penny, and discovering a codename for something she's involved in: The Delta Initiative. His level of knowledge on this is only that it involves the military and General Ironwood. He spends some time investigating this to no avail, and tries to tell Blake that her own search is currently futile. Ozpin finds out about Kevin's search, and asks that he share whatever he finds.

Kevin also runs into Cardin, who wants to reform himself and his team after a mix of Jaune/Kevin's words/the school population convinces him that he needs to change. Kevin agrees to help after all of CRDL agrees to it, trying to teach Cardin team combat as well as anger control and patience. Ozpin (And Jaune, to an extent) takes up this charge from Kevin. Kevin runs into Hexanne during his Vytal Festival mission. His semblance, being able to absorb pain and anger, goes wild for a bit after this.

The Breach occurs, and Team BYRN shows that they're a great grimm extermination team again. Jade has nightmares, and goes to Kevin for comfort. Kevin has a dream similar to Yang's, except it's Hexanne in place of Raven.

END

I hope you all enjoyed The Veil, and that you leave a review (seriously, I have no idea if I'm doing anything right or wrong with this and some feedback would be nice, you 1500+ people)! Part Two will come pretty soon (AKA as soon as I figure out how to start it off), and I look forward to seeing people read that as well.


	34. Chapter 34

For those of you who are following this story, I've just posted an information chapter and the first actual chapter of the second section of the Team BYRN stories. While this one is titled The Veil, the sequel is titled Return To Darkness. It's 99% speculation, since it spans past the season 2 finale. That section is what I had in mind when I made up this story. Some things will happen.

The prologue/chapter1 will seem somewhat repetitive if you already follow this story, but at least skip to the bottom. That stuff is actually new.


End file.
